I Confess
Kindle Edition
Coach House Books · Ebook · September 9, 2025
How is a lyric poem like a polygraph machine?
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- Who it’s for
- Eric Schmaltz examines truth-telling through poetry, lie-detection technologies, and his own experiences under scrutiny.
- Themes
- Truth-telling and lie detection, Power, technology, and language, Personal subjectivity under scrutiny
- Pacing
- Reflective
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Start with this bookAbout this book
How is a lyric poem like a polygraph machine? A personal, poetic examination of the technology of truth-telling. Eric Schmaltz’s I Confess delves into the complexities of truth-telling in poetry, and the history of technologies designed to produce truth from willing and unwilling subjects, considering what it means to use a device – poetry or polygraph – to draw out one’s most profound feelings and emotions.
Continue reading
Exploring the intersection of power, technology, and language, I Confess meditates on lie detection and its history, including trials by ordeal and pseudoscientific technologies. The poet then turns to his own personal experiences working with a lie detector and polygraph analyst. Taking himself as the central subject of the book, Schmaltz puts his subjectivity and positionality under scrutiny. The answers to questions such as What does family mean to you? and Can you describe a time when you felt your best? inspire a range of forms from conventional lyrical verse to list poems to palindromes to visual poems. With an afterword by Orchid Tierney, I Confess is a personal, poetic document of truth’s performance under duress.
Poetry Under Scrutiny
Eric Schmaltz examines truth-telling through poetry, lie-detection technologies, and his own experiences under scrutiny.
Come here for
- A poetic examination of lie detection, from trials by ordeal to polygraphs
- Personal experiences working with a lie detector and analyst
Expect
- Verse ranging from lyrics and lists to palindromes and visual poems
- Questions about family and personal experience shape the forms
Where it sits
| American Poetry | 50% |
|---|---|
| Family Poems | 40% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Canadian Poetry
- Poetry - General Themes
- Place Poetry
- Authors
- Eric Schmaltz
- Publisher
- Coach House Books
- Published
- September 9, 2025
- Format
- Ebook
- Theme
- Truth-telling and lie detection · Power, technology, and language · Personal subjectivity under scrutiny
- Reading lane
- Canadian Poetry