[Ethan Anderson]

Where does versatility fit into this discussion (i.e., the ability to serve the material, to "disappear" into the voices of diverse narrators)?

Or does it at all?

In fiction, I'm far less interested in authors than books. In music, I find versatile peformers dull, and vastly prefer artists committed to a defined style or discipline. In film and theater, stars bore and chameleons thrill (on the other hand, I do pay attention to the body of work of directors).

But when it comes to poetry, honestly, I'm on the fence about the importance/desirability of voice.

So I'm stumped. And you?

[Janet Kenny]

Ethan:
In music, I find versatile peformers dull, and vastly prefer artists committed to a defined style or discipline. In film and theater, stars bore and chameleons thrill (on the other hand, I do pay attention to the body of work of directors).

When I was what they insist on describing as a "classical" singer I was deeply into versatility in what I thought was the best meaning of the word. All music has its own voice. I remember Benjamin Britten saying that all his vocal music was written for specific singers and I know that was true of Verdi and others. With new scores I never knew what sound I would make until the music showed me. I was nauseated by agents and teachers who viewed the voice as a "product". "If you don't have a recognisable sound they won't know how to cast you". Of course I had my own "voice" but I regarded it as a blank sheet of paper.

Writing is different in that one is also the composer but for me the principle remains. The voice comes with the poem. It's up to others to know whether the "voice" is characteristically mine.
Janet

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited July 06, 2005).]

[Rose Kelleher]

If you find versatile performers dull, then they're not truly versatile.

While there's nothing wrong with having a distinctive voice, I also don't see how there could be anything wrong with versatility. What's not to like? You don't hear people saying, "Oh, I don't have any respect for decathlon winners." Of course versatility doesn't mean flailing around trying different things with varying levels of success (i.e., what I do), it means rising to a variety of challenges. Sure, that makes it tougher on fans who have certain expectations when they buy your book, and on critics, who like being able to categorize poets as New Whatever-ists. But just because others find consistency reassuring doesn't mean the artist should embrace it.

[Ethan Anderson]

Either that or I'm a dull listener.

I'm aware that on a certain level this kind of preference is really just an indefensible set of biases, subject to change over time.

And as to Janet's tales of woe, I do sometimes wonder if there's a bit too much of a "branding" aspect to voice in poetry as well. In that regard, the pros and cons seem to have roughly equal weight--readers might be more receptive to what you're conveying, but only if there's something in the telling that hearkens back to previous works.

But as I said before, I'm on the fence about this one. That's why the thread is interesting (my own posts excepted, of course).

[Tim Murphy]

I completely agree that it's nice to curl up with an old friend and know the "voice." Whether that be so idiosyncratic a lyricist as Father Hopkins, or a man of many voices like Browning.

I infinitely prefer a recognizable voice, and I am amazed that I ever developed that. Child that I was, I thought I would forever imitate my great predecessors. I couldn't foresee a life that ventured outside the bounds of the books I devoured.

I do fear that Tom's exercise with FV could be repeated in sonnet form. One can seize upon any number of sonnets in Bill Baer's new anthology, or any number that we see at Deep End, and they're damn near indistinguishable. (By the way, Tom, I meant the grad students should get a life.)

Close as they are in life experience, I would never confuse two ploughmen poets, Clare and Burns. Nor could I confuse Robinson and Frost. Or Francis and Murphy. I think that is as it should be, and if you are not writing in a recognizable voice, you have not found the ground you are able to defend.

[Henry Quince]

For the second time this week I agree with Janet. And I suspect that when people say the voice of an author, Frost, say, is always unmistakable, they do so with the benefit of knowledge.

Without googling, can anyone say how many authors are represented in the following ten extracts? Does anyone recognise an author’s voice right off?

a)
It’s a hard life for the farmer
ploughing the land in spring,
and a hard life for the poet
trying and trying to sing.

b)
We walked through the last of summer,
When shadows reached long and blue
Across days that were growing shorter:
You said: “There’s autumn too.”

c)
A vacuum of need
Collapsed each hunting heart
But tremulously we held
As hawk and prey apart,
Preserved classic decorum,
Deployed our talk with art.

d)
What risk for you as you munch on a snack
while, somewhere below, a fish
opens his mouth to fate? Then back
he’s thrown, with a pious wish!

e)
Explosive passion and proportioned pain,
The randy woman and the scream machine:
I’d do it, have it all again —
Mad, bad, ironically named Irene!

f)
Each time a goose walks on my grave,
I fear the future less —
a new adventure for the brave,
at worst a nothingness.

g)
The world is too much painted. On we go:
fudging and gilding, we lay waste an era.
While sitcom Friends asked millions for a show,
millions starved. So why not join the con?
Bring me my smock, my gaudy paints! Bring on
the phony tinsel and the fake veneer!

h)
At fifteen, I would watch my brother,
three years older, masturbate with zest
our black cocker spaniel, Druid.
The dog — head motionless, with eye-whites rolling
and haunches humping — submitted silently
but his ejaculation when it came
was copious and forceful; he afterwards remained
as still as if bewitched or mesmerised.

i)
Why did you give me average looks, sub-average height,
a stammer, bandy legs, poor vision?
Am I supposed to thank you
because I wasn’t born disabled?
Well, what about those who were?
What have you got to say to them?
Wait, let me guess:
you visit the father’s sins upon the children,
even unto the third and fourth generation.
Bastard!

j)
Shall a Haitian scold eardrum or cochlea
or a conscious contraption breathe of mullions and arches
by a riverine minnow-streamed Chaparral airstrip,
as somewhere a chimpanzee
passes the Turing Test?

[Mark Allinson]

Henry,

I must admit, none of these voices proclaims its author immediately to my ear. But are the samples large enough?

Also, I have so little access to contemporary poetry (I can't afford it and the libraries won't order it) that I don't have an internalised model for many contemporary poets.

Do you intend to prove with this test that "voice" is an illusion?

------------------
Mark Allinson

[Henry Quince]

No, Mark, I certainly don’t say voice is an illusion. But I agree with Janet that, while some poets settle into one voice, others may find different voices for different poems. Someone or other wrote that “every novel requires its own style” and I think that’s a similar idea.

Another possible analogy is with film actors. One type, let’s call him the Cary Grant model, basically goes through film after film playing essentially the same character. If the character is an interesting or charming one, that works fine, at the cost of narrowing the range of roles he can play. He gets better and better at “playing himself” — though that one screen persona might or might not correspond with the way he is when he’s not working. (Grant was said to be neurotic and unsure of himself, but Tom Hanks is said to be exactly the nice guy he usually plays.) The other type is the versatile actor who can “become” different characters as the scripts may require — an Olivier or a Brando. I know which I’d rather be. I consider poetry to be a kind of drama or fiction anyway.

I’m somewhat sceptical that voice is in all cases identifiable. For instance, you cite Tim’s trimeter, yet I remember a while back (perhaps when you were absent) he and Mike Moran played a trick at the Deep End — each posted a poem by the other. And there were no immediate cries of “That’s Tim!” on Mike’s thread. Of course some writers have a “signature” idiosyncrasy in their phrasing, but I think faced with a work by an undisclosed author most of us would get more clues from the content, the preoccupations, than from the phrasing or meter. Of course I may be wrong; perhaps you can reliably spot an author once you know his/her work inside-out. But again, I think this assumes that authors work in one vein only, whereas some work in many.

And Mark, I too buy little contemporary poetry. People like Heaney are certainly in the libraries (well, maybe not yours) but there’s plenty by a variety of writers available directly in front of you as you read this — on the Web. poemhunter.com is a good one, although some of the poems there have their line breaks munged.

Henry





[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited July 10, 2005).]

[Rose Kelleher]

Henry, what are the answers?

[Alexander Grace]

We all sound like ourselves, but our selves change everyday, every minute even. I'd say most of us have a few states, a few related personalities we slip easily into because we know how, and a whole forest of other, less well defined or developed personalities, such as a particular mood we inhabit under a thunderstorm, or a slightly macho attitude we take on when critting poetry, as a random example .

I think people who write in many voices have realised on some level that as humans, our claim to having consistent and definable 'characters' is a bit of a fib we tell ourselves to make us feel secure and establish a social identity for ourselves. I think those many-voiced writers know that they can, with a little effort, create (or observe) a new personality for themselves and inhabit it for the purposes of writing; most artist do this to an extent, even confessional writers - perhaps the reason people get so annoyed with bad confessional writing is not that it is too personal, but rather that the author has fabricated a fictional, usually victim status character to vindicate him or herself, and it smacks of dishonesty.

For my part, I often muck around with stitching parts of my pals to each other and writing through my new Frankenstein's monster friend's eyes. I feel I also have a core voice, perhaps the closest to my soulvoice, if you don't mind me getting a bit kooky. I don't/can't always write in that one, though poems I do write this way tend to be more consistently successful with readers; other voices I use are my own personal constructed (contrived?) voices, (see above) and mangled bits of people I clone and nourish into new characters. Sometimes I make characters from scratch, but I tend to get more stylised representations this way (which often go down well, I think because the reader can find them in the poem, while real people often aren't easily captured on paper - I mean, look how hard it is with photographs, let alone words). A lot of my voices tend to be female, and I mainly read books and poetry by women, as well as listening most often to female singers: I think writing can be a good way to voice parts of yourself you can't always express in a semi-conformist society (not that I am much of a conformist within it, but everyone is to some extent... 'Is there individuality, or just varying shades of non-conformity?' went Natalie Merchant's lyrics).

Roger Slater, excellent post.

I like this thread, it's the best I've noticed for ages.

[This message has been edited by Alexander Grace (edited July 18, 2005).]