Call me a skeptic when it comes to immediately recognizable "voice" in a poem. I suspect that, as with blind taste tests of colas, people think they know what they are sampling and are very often wrong. Some of what we recognize as a poet's voice is really his or her usual subject matter. Very few poets have a style that is so distinctive (often because they have invented it, like Ogden Nash or e.e. cummings) that one can readily tell who is writing. Good poets often have more than one string to their bow and can fool people who aren't thinking of their full range.
I am not denying that most good poets develop a voice that is strong and characteristic. One brings everything one is and knows to writing poetry, and many things that are beyond one's conscious awareness, too. In fact, I think that it is partly the ability to let the unconscious speak for the writer that brings out the writer's truest voice. Someone like Shakespeare can speak in so many voices that we have to remind ourselves that he was just one person. So I think voice is a fascinating issue, but one that can't be boiled down to any simple rules or guidelines.
Susan
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