Hunchprose: Hoskote's poems offer a bastion of truth in a post-truth world

In our post-truth world, where the difference between fact and fiction collapses too easily, poetry is the last residue of truth, capable of excavating histories or creating new ones.

In the titular poem of Ranjit Hoskote’s new book, the narrator laments the inefficacy of a poet’s craft in a contest with a rhetorician: “Across from me he strops his fine blade / smooth talker barefaced liar pissfart / teller of tall tales who wraps you up / in his flying carpet and serves you snake oil / carries of the princess every time.” This is almost a scene from a bazaar — or the free market of ideas in liberal thought — with the rhetorician and the poet facing each other in their stalls. Compared to the rhetorician’s glittery