Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
Shakespeare went on to offer a disingenuos answer to his own question, but his sonnet would have failed had he simply said that accomplished writers have a voice all their own.
I think "voice" is a natural byproduct of the fact that poets are individuals. Just as we recognize our friends' voices on the telephone, or can recognize their handwriting at a glance without reading a word, we can recognize the way they go about expressng themselves in verse, provided, however, that they have developed enough skill and ease with their craft to permit their private selves to show through in their public poems. The old cliche about going off to "find yourself" is true in poetry. A poet needs to find himself, which is not as simple as it sounds. It involves ridding oneself of self consciousness, paradoxically, and not unconsciously adopting the disguises of cliche or imitation or posturing. Since art is artifice, the marriage of artifice with the genuine, non-artificial core of individuality to produce something distinctive, yet somehow generic and ultimately artificial, gives rise to the alchemy that is art's ultimate appeal. With luck and skill, perhaps we can all complain, along with the Bard, that our verse is barren of new pride.
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