the pastoral class

One issue Paul brought up today, and has several times before, is a poet’s voice.  And a poet discovers not just a voice but a shape – there’s a distinctive shape on the page that a poet’s work takes.  I can’t claim to know these shapes.  Although, it seems more obvious with Neruda or E.E. Cummigns, maybe Yeats, than others.

What is voice?  What’s the difference between voice and style?  Style, it seems to me, deals with a writer’s bag of tricks – devices, techniques, emphasis – maybe style has to do mostly with strategy.  I will convey this emotion using emotive language.  I will create tension by conjuring a relevant distraction - Levine’s use of repetition in Smoke for example.  He gives us new images of smoke and light, reminding us of the dual images, the tension – can you imagine in the air filled with smoke? - the light came from nowhere and went nowhere – objects turned one way then another to catch the light - the light overflowing with smoke – why is the air filled with smoke? - just like the sun, hidden in smoke.  Keats uses personification – the foster child of silence – unravished bride of quietness.  But are these examples of the poets’ voices?  Actually, yes… they are, aren’t they?  But only because they’ve made them so.   

My piano professor, who follows this blog, used to say that much virtuosity was unnecessary.  It doesn’t affect sound, it plays no role in interpretation.  It’s for show.  But some of a concert pianist’s “voice” may come out in his virtuosity – his adagios, forte, pianissimo etc. 

Maybe style, then, is a bit like an attitude.  We can adopt attitudes to suit situations… but it is in a collection of attitudes we find personality.  So, you and I may share an attitude about Jazz but have very different personalities.  Similarly, poets may share strategies/styles and have very different “voices”.  For example don’t Janet Lewis and Yeats both employ a similar strategy of evoking place (and emotions tethered to it) via sounds, particularly sounds associated with water?  But this is more like shared attitudes, because considering the big picture, they’re very different poets – they have different voices. 

So, to conclude - maybe a practical way to distinguish between voice and style is just to ask yourself, as John Gardner does, is it working in service of the poem.  If a poem is of a whole, beats with one heart, and rings true, than it has an authentic voice.  I, the writer, am saying something the way it has to be said.  Therefore, I am not saying something because I have found an interesting way to say it.  I am not playing Rachmaninoff’s C# minor prelude with my hands drifting or flying above the keys.  I am not inserting a clever, adjective laden metaphor.  Or, to paraphrase Aristoltle, I am not adding parts on to a person as I carve a statute (a third arm).  The statue, like the poem, need only have the parts of the idea.  Everything tacked on is empty style, not part of an authentic, unified artistic voice.