Depth of Being

In my excitement at amassing a stack of books to read over the summer, I bought what I thought was a novel about three couples. It turned out to be a book of non-fiction written by a casual acquaintance of the couples, an outsider unrelated to them. I gave it about a dozen pages before I resolved to do something I rarely do: return the book to get my money back.

It's too bad. These three couples, with their marital woes, broken dreams, and wasted lives, would have made for a sad and lovely story. As non-fiction, however, they were whiners who were destined never to be the adult in the room. I can't take three hundred pages of that, not when summer reading time is so precious and coveted.

This has me thinking about art and truth, and truth vs. fact—concepts I brush up against regularly in my literature classes. In my own work, I utilize some of the techniques of fiction while crafting poems that (I hope) get at the truth of human relationships and the meaning of life. I am always aware of the depth of being that can be inferred through one's imagination, and then evoked in a carefully-constructed poem. I see this depth of being in paintings, as well. Beauty is part of it, certainly, as is empathy, but it's something more, which is why I've taken to calling it "depth of being." It's a seemingly-impossible balance of truth and fact that is the artistic equivalent to creating life out of inanimate paint/canvas or ink/paper.

More about "depth of being" in future posts...