A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to

Hear the words of E. M. Forster, novelist and thinker of quiet yet enduring power: “A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.” In this saying, he draws a sacred line between the realm of knowledge and the realm of art. For knowledge, or information, is always a signpost—it gestures outward, pointing the mind to facts, events, or things beyond itself. But a poem, Forster tells us, is different. It does not exist to point beyond itself; it is complete within its own being. Its truth lies not in reference but in unity, in the way its words, rhythms, and images weave together into a whole that feels inevitable.

To say that a poem is true if it hangs together is to declare that truth in art is not factual accuracy but harmony. A poem may tell of gods that never walked the earth or of sorrows that never befell the poet. Yet if its language is bound together in balance, if its music carries the weight of coherence, then it possesses truth—the truth of form, of vision, of integrity. Unlike science or history, which must be measured against external reality, the poem’s measure is internal: does it live within itself as a complete world? If so, then it is true.

The ancients grasped this long before Forster. Consider the epics of Homer. Did the gods truly descend to the battlefield of Troy? Historians may argue, scholars may question, but the poems themselves endure because they “hang together.” Their lines, their cadences, their unfolding of fate and wrath and sorrow—these bind into a fabric that convinces not the rational mind but the human soul. The truth of Homer is not in whether Troy fell as he told it, but in the coherence of the tale itself. Thus Forster joins the voices of the wise who remind us: the truth of poetry is not fact but wholeness.

Think too of Shakespeare. In Macbeth, witches prophesy and forests march against castles. These are impossibilities in the realm of information. And yet, because the play hangs together—because each word flows into the next with inevitability—we believe. We are seized by the poem’s truth, not because it points to external fact, but because it creates its own reality, complete and entire. In this way, Forster’s insight is made flesh: a poem points to nothing but itself, and yet in doing so, it gives us vision into the essence of life.

This contrast with information is vital. Information is useful; it builds cities, cures diseases, and guides ships across oceans. But it is never complete in itself—it is always a bridge leading outward. A weather report points to the storm; a history book points to the past; even a scientific law points to the phenomena it describes. But a poem, unlike these, is an end in itself. When we read Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale,” the poem is not about something else—it is itself, a vessel of meaning whole and entire, as a flower is not about beauty but is beauty itself.

The lesson here is profound. Do not judge art as you judge information. Do not demand of a poem that it be useful, that it instruct, that it point you outward. Instead, allow it to be what it is—a creation that justifies itself by its own unity. Read slowly, listen deeply, and ask not what it refers to, but how it hangs together. In this, you will find truth of another kind: not the truth of fact, but the truth of harmony.

Therefore, remember Forster’s wisdom: “A poem is true if it hangs together.” Let this shape the way you encounter poetry, and indeed, the way you live. For life itself, like a poem, must one day be judged not by its outward information but by its inward coherence. If your days hang together with integrity, if your words and deeds align into a pattern of meaning, then your life, too, will be true—not by pointing outward, but by standing complete in itself, a poem written upon the earth.