Eric Lindstrom, Chapman Matis, and Eleanor McDowell

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Sir Philip Sidney said the poet "nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth." We say that in free verse poetry, anything goes. In other forms of poetry, though, rhyme and meter may both spontaneously and arbitrarily condition what poets say and therefore what they mean. Poetry also does things beyond making statements about the world: it pleads, cares, cajoles, warns, and reflects upon itself. What ways do we have to think about truth in poetry? Do those ways amount to philosophy?