I understand "Voice" as meaning a number of things -

1. Simply, the characteristics of a poet's texts. These are measurable -
language is a measurable material (particularities of vocab, pattern,
grammar, etc) - though it takes a long time to do it (I don't mean just
bibliometrics, I can't remember a post when anyone has engaged in close
textual criticism on this list, nor, I guess, would I expect it, though I do
like reading textual criticism and wish it could be done more, even if I
don't do it either!) - it's a *discussion* list, after all, and perhaps, for
good or ill, it is more engaged in really very broad intentions and
principles, before quickly veering off into news; again that's fine. Anyway,
in that empirical sense, voice is described of a text or group of texts
('the poet's texts') by those who study particular texts, whether the
particular poet is intending such patterns or not. That's if the
readers/critics are studying it *for* characteristics, recurrences, pattern
(you can study texts for other things of course), and are able to show that
these patterns are there; and if the poets themselves are playing the game -
anonymity, collaboration, pseudonymity etc baffle the sample set. I wonder
if even those most critical of the concept of 'voice' can evade pattern in
their own work (since language is material, and the poet is material, ie
bounded), or is pattern so depersonalised a concept, the problem of the
individualist voice disappears when it is preferred?

2. A subset of the above, but something much more folksy, which is also to
say, much more mannered. I may of course be wrong in this (it is obviously a
prejudicial point of view, precisely because it is without the labour needed
for the procedure described above!), but when I think of poets who have a
"distinctive voice" I tend to think of poets whose work is involved in
patterning kinds of 'personal wisdom' (this usually comes down to being
their own) while also keeping other kinds of intelligence at bay. A subset
of this would be 'wisdom' associated with say rural communities (Edward
Thomas), urban consumerism (O'Hara). "Voice" tends to imply the assertion of
the poet's persona (they can be good virtual company, as any opinionated
friend can be, and that's just one thing any reader may read for), but as
definition 2 tends toward the groped-for-definition in 1 above, this need
not be straightforward, text-makers as different as Beckett or Bob Cobbing;
narrow-but-deep? - have a "voice". That suits me fine, actually, up to a
point - I'd argue that that procedure (and the effect) is a necessary one to
begin to make sense of anything, and to make anything full stop actually -
but it's also not enough for a omnivorous reader (and, hopefully,
text-maker), with which I also identify myself, i.e over the long term, I
like voices not voice, if also, once in a while, the voice (pattern) of the
decentred text.

3. Something especially associated with concepts of 'apprenticeship' in
poetry, hence 'finding one's voice'. I wonder where and when that concept
emerged - it has the gentle sound of say Mark van Doren to me, ie interwar
to post war East Coast, Anglophilic high culture American discourse? - but I
may be very wide of the mark. "Always notes-towards, never getting there!"
Although it sounds as if it's about finding a kind of maturity, albeit a
male maturity, since it's male voices that break and become their adult
selves?, it is also tied up with whatever publishing infrastructure exists
since it requires being published enough times for that 'voice' to be seen
to have developed or had its genesis. 'The poet has finally found their
voice' can only be said if the speaker has seen the poetry develop over
time, and that implies kinds of platform/publication/reception from which
other things lead (and which implies a certain amount of patronisation on
the part of the critic, and a buying into the concept of inevitable progress
through time) all the implications of which, er, I can't go into right
now...

Or what?

Richard (Price)



-----Original Message-----
From: Leona Medlin [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 6:43 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: voice/play/self


does a voice imply a self?

is there a self that plays?

is a self that plays a voice?

does a voice at play have a self?

are there selves that play at voices?

are playing voices selfless?

are voices selfless, playing?

are many voices playing?

is selfless play voiceless?


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