Dichtung u. Warheit

I've always felt, unlike Goethe, that poetry is truth, which means I write about things that are true & are thus poetic; I don't fabricate poetically. Too much poetry has been escapist, avoidant, & self-indulgent verbalizing for effect. Believing what we are expected to believe is poetry is anti-poetic. This makes for a fairly dry style, I admit.

Occasionally I do write something that's not strictly true. In my most recent poem "Wh@t coloss@l b@lls" (against Dick Cheney) that appears below & on The New Verse News edited by James Penha (a NYC-expat) in Jakarta, Java, Indonesia (really!) the 3 @-signs in the first line imply Cheney has 3-b@lls. He acts as tho he does, so I say so. Is that poetic truth? If so, Cheney provoked it.