Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.

Invention is not the opposite of accuracy. What you make up comes out of what you have actually seen and felt, so a scene that never happened can be exactly right about something that does. The image that fits does not fit by chance; it fits the way a measurement fits, and you can feel the click when it lands. Getting it wrong is just as possible in a poem as in a proof, which is why finding the right word is real work.

Next time you describe something that matters to you, refuse the phrase that is nearly right. Keep going until the invented detail tells the truth.