Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Truth

“The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.” 

― Nadine Gordimer

“Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners...” 

― Natalie Goldberg

“Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude.” 

― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Truth, holding a mirror and a serpent, by  Olin Levi Warner (1896).

 Midweek Motif ~ Truth

Back in the 1970s,  Adrienne Rich’s “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying” asserted that  omission of truth is as much a lie as falsifying of information.  Honor demands truth. Rich says:

“The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire.”  

I believe we poets aim always to tell the truth about things and about truth itself.   But truth is difficult. 

Your challenge:  Choose a truth to tell in a poem.  Or tell us how and where to find “the truth.”

Allegory of Truth by Jacopo Tintoretto (1 January 1564)

Sonnet 138: 

When My Love Swears That She Is Made Of Truth

by William Shakespeare

When my love swears that she is made of truth

I do believe her, though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutored youth,

Unlearnèd in the world's false subtleties.

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although she knows my days are past the best,

Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;

On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.

But wherefore says she not she is unjust?

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,

And age in love, loves not to have years told.

Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,

And in our faults by lies we flattered be. 

~

Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind by  Jean-Léon Gérôme (1896) 

~

Tell all the truth but tell it slant — (1263)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —

Search for Truth

by DH Lawrence

Search for nothing any more, nothing
except truth.
Be very still, and try and get at the truth.

And the first question to ask yourself is:
How great a liar am I? 

A Truth, a Poem
~

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

(Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Running.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Captivity

“We are determined to answer evil with GOOD, slavery with FREEDOM, 
rape with hope!  We are against slavery, rape, beheading, torture, 
violations of human rights, corruption and misuse of religion!” 
― Widad Akrawi

“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” 
― Frederick Douglass

“The caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, 

the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.” 
― Nadine Gordimer, Get a Life

source

Midweek Motif  ~ Captivity

The United Nations uses March 25th to observe two separate International Days for victims of slavery and other forms of captivity.  Follow the links to read more about the United Nations' resolutions:

• International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade:  ". . . tribute to the many women who suffered and died during the slave trade . . . "
• International Day of Solidarity with Detained and Missing Staff Members:  ". . . protect United Nations staff and peacekeepers, as well as our colleagues in the non-governmental community and the media."

YOUR CHALLENGE:  Describe a captivity in a poem using imagery and narrative story ~ OR, simply use captivity as a motif.

my own photo in Père Lachaise Cemetery

Excerpt from  To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth

by Phillis Wheatley, 1753 - 1784 

. . . . .

Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,
Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
By feeling hearts alone best understood,
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat:
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast?
Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d
That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d:
Such, such my case.  And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

. . . .   (Read the rest HERE at Poetry.ORG.)

The Captive Dove 

byAnne Bronte 

Poor restless dove, I pity thee; 

And when I hear thy plaintive moan, 

I mourn for thy captivity, 

And in thy woes forget mine own. 

To see thee stand prepared to fly,

 And flap those useless wings of thine, 

And gaze into the distant sky, 

Would melt a harder heart than mine. 

In vain ­ in vain! Thou canst not rise: 

Thy prison roof confines thee there;

 Its slender wires delude thine eyes, 

And quench thy longings with despair.

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at Poetry Soup.)

# 
For those who are new to Poets United: 




Post your Captivity poem on your site, and then link it here.



Share only original and new work written for this challenge. 



If you use a picture include its link.  


Please leave a comment here and 
visit and comment on our poems.



(Our next Midweek Motif is "cherry blossoms.")

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Poets United Midweek Motif: Social Good

“And just when you’d think [humans] were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they occasionally showed more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of.” 
― Terry Pratchett

“The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.” 

― Nadine Gordimer

Gandhi and his wife Kasturbhai, 1902, South Africa

Midweek Motif: Social Goods

According to Mahatma Gandhi, there are Seven Deadly Sins that could destroy society:

• Politics without principle.

• Wealth without work.

• Commerce without morality.

• Pleasure without conscience.

• Education without character.

• Science without humility.

• Worship without sacrifice. 

Do you agree?
With the important ingredient, 
is each of these a social blessing?

Your Poetry Challenge:  

• Let one of Gandhi's social evils inspire you to illustrate one of your own social goods.  
• 160-word limit--the length of Whitman's poem about work below.

Poetic Inspiration:

I Hear America Singing

Walt Whitman, 1819 - 1892

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe
     and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off
     work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the
     deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing
     as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the
     morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at
     work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young
     fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

Please:  
1.    Post your Social-Good poem on your site, and then link it here. Does it come under the 160-word limit? 
2.    If you use a picture include its link.  
3.    Share only original and new work written for this challenge. 
4.    Leave a comment here.
5.    Honor  us by visiting and commenting on others' poems.

(Next week's Midweek Motif will be An Evening Out.)

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