At Brian Brodeur’s excellent site How a Poem Happens, writers talk about the genesis and themes of their work. Leslie Harrison discusses “The Day Beauty Divorced Meaning,” from her Bakeless Prize winning book Displacement:

Could you talk about fact and fiction and how this poem negotiates the two?

This poem seems to work the way a lot of my poems do—as a kind of fiction masquerading as fact. Fiction dressed up as fact for the costume ball with its sequined mask and slinky dress, so it can sneak in the door and dance with all the true things poems always wants to dance with. But isn’t this what metaphor is, in a way, fiction masquerading as fact seducing truth?