While many of my poems are inspired by events, places or people I know or have known, it's also true that for the most part the poems are 90% fictional. I advocate that this is the most liberating way to write poetry because it allows for craft to come before potentially non-furthering or boring "true details." Being corseted by some "but it really happened that way" line, image or clunker plot is not in a poem's best interests.
As an editor, I find this particularly obvious in even otherwise wonderful poems that come into TCE's submissions' queue. This is proved out when I sometimes query poets about the possibility of revising a superfluous or awkward line and the response is: "but it really happened that way."
Poets and writers of fiction have to be willing to ask themselves if their reporting of facts is worth the dulling or deadening which can happen when they possessively hang onto some of their phrasing just because "it's real." If the only compelling reason for including certain words or lines in a poem is "it really happened," then throw them out! Poems should pass these craft tests: Evoke place, image, lyricism, concept, and/or surprise; every word serves purpose and furthers content. Poems may be narrative, but they are not really meant to be short stories. And they are definitely not news articles.
Another aspect of this fact/fiction scenario has to do both with point-of-view characters and intended audiences; to whom is the poet writing? This subject is on my mind rather a lot because I've found that if I don't know who I'm writing to/for, what I'm attempting to say becomes pale. It fades, it wavers. It lies limp. This is where the less fictional has often come into play for me; I've typically needed an intimate (and often singular) audience to write to for each poem. When there is no one I feel like addressing in such a way at a particular time in my life, I am less motivated to write. Some might be tempted to call this lethargy a symptom of writer's block. In reality, my writer's block is a symptom of failing to target a new audience of at least one. When I remind myself of this, I can then reach into the bag of relationships and acquaintances (or even fictional characters) and draw one out to "speak" to about my influx of ideas. The result of doing so often paints a fresh complexion onto a paler draft, effectively and further fictionalizing its make-up.
Another benefit of choosing to write poems with someone else in mind as audience, is that poets will find they are less egocentric in the process. Writing to someone else requires shifts of outward contemplation about that audience's perception. It considers his tastes. Her frames of reference. Imagining that other — those others, if you’re writing to a broader audience — and his way of processing what you are sending his way, helps also to free up the notion that you must write "what happened." Write what happens when you are free to say what you wish to your chosen audience.
