[Susan McLean]

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

[Tom Jardine]

Tim,

One excellent poet among us who doesn't have a distinctive voice is Alan Sullivan. That is partly because he has such a gift for mimesis. And the voice he most uncannily imitates is mine. I was just stuck with a mediocre, impenetrable, deep imagey poem in Mortal Stakes which Mark quotes above. It was a 12 liner, and then Alan grew it to 16 by composing lines 7-12. And who can tell the difference?

Believe me, I certainly noted it because it is notable, but I still thought it was you.

Susan,

Your post seems to contradict itself, but at the end you say, "So I think voice is a fascinating issue, but one that can't be boiled down to any simple rules or guidelines."----I don't think anyone is trying to boil anything down to to simple rules or guidelines.

I think poets (and in other art forms) should and do struggle to make their own style, something identifiable, which is in process bringing out their own voice. I think this element of style often matches where the individual is in their development of who they are, and what they want to do in life, and what kind of person they want to be, which may be bringing out the person, their inner voice there all along.

I just want to note that in the thread I started on general with the four different poets writing in the same unidentifiable style, this thread subsequently picks up on the same idea, but is staying on track much better.

TJ

[Tim Murphy]

Susan has an excellent point on Shakespeare, many voices. So many in fact, that when I first read Marlowe I thought he was Shakespeare. Except that Kit is way more gay than Will. And some of the songs from the plays sound an awful lot like Campion and Jonson. That's of course partly attributable to his being the greatest dramatic poet. I think there is an undifferentiation in Elizabethan verse that ends shortly thereafter. For instance, and this is Mark's field, who could mistake Herbert for Donne?

TJ, that was a brilliant pastiche of boring crap you assembled. The chasing of voice in creative writing schools is scandalous. I mean, get a life, develop passionate interests, then write what you know with minute attention to its close observation. When you read a Wilbur plant poem, you know it's Wilbur, because he knows plants as well as I know dogs or pheasants.

[Katy Evans-Bush]

But Tim, I thought Marlowe WAS Shakespeare - after that brilliantly faked "death"... and all the others, weren't they Shakespeare too? Isn't THAT why Elizabethan poetry is undifferentiated?

KEB

[Roger Slater]

Shakespeare, of course, could inhabit a character and create langauge and speeches that permitted very diverse types of people to become real in a deep way, from the inside out. But I still think that Shakespeare's voice as a poet/writer comes through whether it's Falstaff or Hamlet or Rosaline or Prospero who's speaking. It's the same with great actors. Dustin Hoffman serves up Willy Loman or the Graduate in a totally convincing manner, but we still know it's Dustin Hoffman.

[Katy Evans-Bush]

A-hem! We still know it's ARTHUR MILLER.

[Tom Jardine]

Tim,

I don't think subject matter is sufficient to save any poem; doesn't the art and style save the subject matter?

Are you giving me the guideline to go out and "get a life?"
Thank you.

TJ

[Carol Taylor]

Oh, I think we do have recognizable voices in our work, but in general I don't think it's a good thing. I would not want every poem I ever wrote to be instantly recognizable as a Carol poem, because then every poem I ever wrote would be just like every other poem I ever wrote, and I would get sick of the sound of my own voice. But since I'm a cynical old bag with a twisted sense of humor (at war with the tattered remains of a naieve streak that insists there really is a tooth fairy), and since we can't disguise our handwriting even when we try, much of my poetry probably is going to be recognizable. I attempt to be true to the character or point of view (real or imagined) of the speaker and to vary the rhyme scheme, meter, style, and content from one poem to the next according to the effect I want. The problem is I have the same old ear and subjective taste to screen it all with.

Carol

[Roger Slater]

But Carol, to say that we might recognize your voice is not to say that everything you write is the same. Is every Richard Wilbur poem the same? Is every Robert Frost poem the same? Yet they (in particular the latter) have voices that are quite recognizable. An individual voice can be deep and broad enough to allow for near infinite variety. Just as writing in form allows for variety, writing in the "form" of oneself should allow no less. It's all you have to work with, when push comes to shove. And it's fine. Like Whitman, you contain multitudes.

Once a voice is established and appreciated, it's an additional pleasure for the reader. ED's voice is obviously quite distinct, and I, like many people, are so enamoured of that voice that I derive pleasure even from her lesser poems. It's sort of like getting a letter from a friend. Even a few hastily written lines summon up the same person who might, on other occasions, write a longer and more thoughtful letter.

[Tom Jardine]

Well said, Roger,

And is it possible to begin to discern the character and personality of the person writing a poem through sounds, and hints of verbal constructions? I think so. Roger, you are so right, the voice in a poem can be like an old friend.

TJ