Chapter 10

Poetic Voice

What is poetic voice? How do you find it in other people’s poems? How do you find it in yourself? Thinking about this topic, I realize that it is more complicated than it seems. We can look at the poems of someone like Marie Howe or Gerald Stern or Ruth Stone, and you can ask yourself: What is it that is characteristic of their poems? What is the sound of their poems? Take for example, Gerald Stern’s “The Dancing.” What are the characteristics of the voice in this poem? What picture of the poet and speaker emerges in the poem? Is the voice in the poem philosophical, down-to-earth or lyrical? All of the above?

Look at Ruth Stone’s poem, “Names.” W hat are the characteristics of this poem? What is the effect of the seemingly unconnected or random thoughts in the poem? What other characteristics are a part of the voice of the poem? Let’s look at Marie Howe’s poem, “The Boy,” as an example. What is the primary feeling that you get about the speaker in this poem? How does the subject enhance the voice? How does the length of the line contribute to poetic voice?

If the voice in a poem is strong and unique, then you should be able to find words to describe it and it should be recognizable, even if the person’s general style or subject matter changes. See if you can describe the voice in this poem, “Public School No. 18, Paterson, New Jersey,” from What We Pass On.

Public School No. 18, Paterson, New Jersey

Miss Wilson’s eyes, opaque

as blue glass, fix on me:

“We must speak English.

We’re in America now.”

I want to say, “I am American,”

but the evidence is stacked against me.

My mother scrubs my scalp raw, wraps

my shining hair in white rags

to make it curl. Miss Wilson

drags me to the window, checks my hair

for lice. My face wants to hide.

At home, my words smooth in my mouth,

I chatter and am proud. In school,

I am silent, grope for the right English

words, fear the Italian word

will sprout from my mouth like a rose,

fear the progression of teachers

in their sprigged dresses,

their Anglo-Saxon faces.

Without words, they tell me

to be ashamed.

I am.

I deny that booted country

even from myself,

want to be still

and untouchable

as these women

who teach me to hate myself.

Years later, in a white

Kansas City house,

the Psychology professor tells me

I remind him of the Mafia leader

on the cover of Time magazine.

My anger spits

venomous from my mouth:

I am proud of my mother,

dressed all in black,

proud of my father

with his broken tongue,

proud of the laughter

and noise of our house.

Remember me, Ladies,

the silent one?

I have found my voice

and my rage will blow

your house down.

In trying to develop your own voice, you have to pay attention to the voice that you hear in your own head. When William Carlos Williams advocated using the American idiom and rooting poems in a given place, I think that’s what he meant. While you should read a great deal of poetry and listen to poetry, in the end, you have to get in tune with your own life, and what’s important to you and how the language sounds to you.