David,
I find this all rather common-sensical, but agree nonetheless.
The trouble with voice is that it's like teaching acting--difficult, and on more than one occasion hard to put into words. Compounding that is the trouble of some folk being able to hear the powerful extra-strength voices, but not the subtle ones.
One critique which I've sometimes heard of novels is that "the author hasn't found his voice yet," as if all voices had to be ranting from the rooftops, as opposed to, oh, say, occasionally quirky, and switching modes as a regular person does in the course of conversation. Though there's more time for this sort of thing in a novel or play than there is in the small space of a poem.
The trouble I find with the workmanlike, in prose as well as poetry, well, I'll quote Marion Zimmer Bradley on this one, in reference to the short stories of a certain school of authors (who I'll not note, since some are friends), "They all write nice tight little stories that are wound up to do what they're supposed to do, and I don't much care for them."
I think we can say the same thing about the mincing manicured every-hair-in-its-place yet strangely soulless sonnets you often run across. Another name for it is greeting card poetry, where the sentiments are so generic as to have all the soul of a kabuki mask--emotion, yes, but curiously stylized.
To cultivate voice, what you need to do is to listen to the way people speak, and use it.
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