In one of essays, W.H. Auden reminds that it Keats's urn and not Keats himself who says 'Beauty Truth, truth beauty' (Ode 210). Then, in next paragraph, Auden gainsays that pronouncement: Art, says, arises out of our desire for and truth [italics mine] and our knowledge that they are not identical (377). He goes on to establish a dichotomy between truth and in poetry, characterizing tension between two as a rivalry between Ariel and Prospero, with Ariel, The Tempest's airy spirit, whose glory and limitation that has no passions, representing beauty, and shrewd and pragmatic Prospero representing truth. Although, says Auden, good poems involve some degree of collaboration between Ariel and Prospero ... it usually possible to say of a poem and, sometimes, of whole output of a poet, that it Ariel-dominated or Prospero-dominated (338). In fact, it seems possible to make such a claim about an entire group or school of poetry--for instance, contemporary southern poets writing in plain style. No doubt poets I have in mind--Dave Smith, Andrew Hudgins, Rodney Jones, Robert Morgan, Betty Adcock, Donald Justice, and others--do not see themselves as part of a school, and it may be that they do not arrive at plain style in same way. But in writing primarily Helen Vendler refers to as first-order poems, those with a first-person, narrative base (75), and doing so in such a way as to clearly privilege Prospero- or truth-dominated mode over an Ariel-dominated one--that to say, by speaking plain--these poets assert primacy of truth and plainness over in context of contemporary art, culture, and writing in American South. Some are more adamant in their assertion of importance of truth over than others. Dave Smith more adamant than most. The first section of 1985 collection of essays, Local Assays: On Contemporary American Poetry, constitutes a sort of manifesto arguing, in effect, for importance of truth in poetry. He reiterates this idea in a number of ways, in discussion, for instance, of poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, who, Smith says, what might be called a pure and whose work describes as extremely lyrical and melodious. The pure poet an escapist, Smith tells us, all expression. Regarding Tagore's love poems, Smith remarks that he seems more in love with idea of love than with any person. He concedes that Tagore's poems are in fact beautiful, but in suggesting the of a young girl's ankle bracelets... one never quite feels it a whole, mature vision. One misses entirely girl's dirty feet, barnyard smell, even dailiness of village life. Because of Tagore does not incorporate in poem, Smith concludes, his pure music finally dismissible.... Tagore's eloquent simplicity and transparent feeling ... do not sustain us (14). Smith sums up feelings by saying that consequences of purity are limited expression, limited knowledge, limited audience, and mere beauty (14--15). Of course, nowhere does Smith argue against need for in poetry, and in fact we find in reviews of volumes such as David Huddle's Paper Boy a dismissal of that poetry which attempts to be truth and no beauty, or at least completely fails in its attempts to produce in its search for truth. Smith says Huddle's compositions... are poems primarily because they have similes and are lined. We are drawn through them not by poetry's compelling sound but by fiction's suspense. The language too inert to engender either transcendence or transformation of factual and local detail. Smith concludes by saying that Huddle is rarely a bad writer, but as a poet has no ear and mediocre. His poems are, I would say, semitough prose anecdotes (41). And Smith saying here except that poetry demands not only truth but as well--that, in fact, it not poetry unless it has latter component? …