The Differences Between Truth and Poetry

"Truthful words are not beautiful, and beautiful words are not truthful"
- Laozi, Tao Te Ching

Truth vs Poetry

• Beautiful words are just.. beautiful. They are not true.
• Poetry is made by making garlands out of words.
• It is not concerned with expressing the truth
• The truth doesn't often lend itself to being expressed in beautiful combinations of words
• It is still possible, in some cases, by careful consideration of words - but not for all cases
• It depends on how well the language's vocabulary is compatible with beautifully expressing the idea
• In any case, poetry is more concerned with its beauty than the truth

In other words, in most cases, a poem is a beautiful lie.

It may also be simply meaningless, after all, it's just a beautiful combination of words.

Nature of Poetry

• Next, poetry is descriptive, and is meant to be interpreted
• The interpretation of poems go beyond their literal words, and takes the reader's mind into a flow of imagination