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literature: all fictions. One may at first ask the obvious question: Why does one need to defend or apologize for poetry in the first place? As a practicing and publishing poet, I can affirm that one does need to defend and apologize for poetry, and often. Upon learning of my career choice, the first question most people ask is some variation of “And how do you make a living?” But there is a more serious question asked in the Renaissance concerning the role of imaginative literature: In what ways is imaginative literature similar to or different from lying? Certainly we must place this text in its humanist contexts. And I would also suggest we ask this question anew. The concept of the poet in the Romantic Age (in which we still live) has so elevated his position that it has, in effect, answered the question by diminishing it. I would suggest that this elevation has actually lessened the influence of poetry in the world because we no longer take poetry seriously as a moral subject in-and-of itself. The situation reminds me of the famous remark by the great Russian poet Joseph Brodsky where he laments that in the Soviet Union there were serious limitations about what he could write, yet still his books were in great demand. After immigrating to the United States, he had full artistic freedom, but no one read his poems or bought his books. he problem of the truth of poetry begins of course with Plato’s rejection of poets which is best expressed in the dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon in book ten of The Republic. For Plato’s Socrates, poetry is a corrupting force. The central objection to the imaginative arts lies in its very nature as a fiction. Poets produce lies: either bad copies of reality or actually dangerous fantasies. In fiction, moral value need not correspond to the form of goodness or justice. Good people can suffer and bad people be rewarded. Vice can be lauded and virtue condemned. However, Socrates leaves open the possibility that poetry may be allowed back into the polus if a proper use can be found for it. Renaissance literary criticism attempts to find that use. Sidney’s “Defense” displays its irony immediately in relation to the occasion upon which it is composed. The “Defense” may be a specific reaction to the general tenor of the Puritan attack on secular society, especially the theater, in the late 1570’s and early 80’s. As a leading 21