Some people flounder around trying lots of things out, happen to get some success with a particular style and stick to it. They have "found their voice" - a subject and style that suits them - though sometimes the success is outward/commercial rather than inward/artistic. Any success is to be welcomed, but maybe there are other, even better voices out there waiting to be discovered. And what happens to the old poems? Sometimes (Wendy Cope?!) it's as if they're disowned. Other times, a poet's posthumous Collected reveals that even after they "found their voice" they were writing in other voices too, maybe using other names. The down-side of "finding one's voice" is that readers might interpret the poet's future development as "losing one's voice". One might expect "voice" to change as the poet's personality does. Once one becomes a twentysomething perhaps personality-changes slow down sufficiently for others to hear a stable ("mature") voice.
|