Reality in poetry

[billy]

i think i know who you speak of, he once asked me to comment on a poem they did, i found it to absurd and very badly written. i also found it to be more than a little disturbing that someone asked me to crit such a pm in private. admittedly i had left critique on a child porn poem they did which they didn't like. it wasn't that the poem was in first person, i just found to be bad poetry, that said i don't read child porn poetry if i know that that's what it is, i'm the same with gratuitous rape poetry,
narrative fiction or non-fiction. does it matter? shouldn't the good narrative or any other kind of poetry place us in or at the very least looking into the poem? in many respects i think poetry while written as fiction can often be viewed as non-fiction. i personally want to be part of the poetry i read. i want to experience the writer's imagination. i say imagination because their personal recollection of something is probably tainted and somewhat grandiose. violently graphical poetry should be written of course, as should anything else. as an adult i'm capable of choosing what i wish to read. as for gratuitous child porn poetry and other works in a similar theme, in general they're against the law and as such wouldn't risk having them on the site. i doubt  distinction, other than the readers is needed. people can be pretty clever as well as stupid, even when it's a "this is a true story poem" i tend to treat it as fiction. for me to see as any kind of reality, it has to be good enough to draw me in; some of your poetry draws the reader in, well some of it draws me in anyway. it's made to be real by the way it's written, not by any truth one may imbue as the poet. so no, i don't need a distinction.
when i write, i have no need to insert myself, my sense of humour comes in handy as do my experiences and imagination. i write for the sake of writing, thankfully i have no meme, intention or message to share, though i do enjoy making myself smile on the very very odd occasion when someone likes a poem i do.

Reality in poetry.
This was commented on in the "The Purpose of Poetry" thread, but I thought
it deserved its own thread.
Prose has distinct categories for fiction and non-fiction, but poetry doesn't.
Why is that?
Was poetry, at some point (or now) viewed as so abstract that
it was unnecessary to make that distinction?
Or that its subjects didn't require that distinction to be made?
Is the 1st person confusion/misconception more pronounced in poetry because of the above?
------
Their's a poet on 'Deep Underground Poetry' who has written a few poems
(quite good, if scary) in 1st person where the narrator is a pedophile.
People go nuts, especially the ones that don't 'get' that a poem's narrator
isn't necessarily the author. Some of these are thoughtful poems that
explore pedophilia and bring up some interesting social contradictions;
some are violently graphic. Should a poet not do 1st person on the latter?
I am not brave enough to ever write 1st person about this topic. The practical
reason is I don't want some people to confuse me with the pedophile in my
poem. This is bowing to ignorance. But, as I said, in this instance I'm not
strong enough to live up to my principles.
But the other reason, is more interesting:  While I'm rationally aware that
the author should never be assumed to be the narrator, emotionally/irrationally
I react to it, I feel the writer IS the character.
I guess one reason is that, as a reader, I've gotten so good at suspending my
disbelief, of immersing myself in what I'm reading, that it has leaked over
into my perception of the real world. I guess it's like the old saying about
salespeople: the best ones believe their own lies.
So if I wrote 1st person about a pedophile, I would, in some fashion, be one.
This is the same problem encountered by actors (especially 'method actors').
When they play a vicious killer, their personality changes even when they are
not acting, and afterwards they can sometimes suffer something akin to PTSD
(posttraumatic stress disorder).
Another reason is that writers take advantage of, even promulgate this
misconception (there a SO many books that authors claim to be non-fiction,  
when, in reality, they're not). The reason is that readers really want to
believe what they're reading is real and are more likely to buy, enjoy,
and be moved them if they think they are real.
How have you as a writer, reader, coped with this irrational side of yourself?
Do you find yourself consciously/subconsciously trying to convince your
readers, not by overt claims such as the 'non-fiction' authors above, but by
how you structure your narrative, how you present your characters, the context,
the setting... that what you are writing is real?