What can Voice do in poetry?

This article is for: All of us!

In my other article on Voice, I went over different tools that use can use to make and change voice in a poem.

But that’s only half the story—well, rather less than half, actually!

As useful as it is to know how to make different voices, in the end we need to know how to use them.

In other words, how different voices can help to create different effects, moods, and meanings in our poetry..

So in this article, I’m going to cover:

What different kinds of voice can add to your poems.

Once again, this is a vast topic. Since every single poem could theoretically have a unique voice, there’s no way I could write about every possibility!

So instead I’m going to do a survey of how voice works in a few selected poems. My hope is that this, combined with the information in the previous article, will give you enough resources to start analyzing voice for yourself, in your own poems and in poems you read.

Chen Chen: Virtuoso Variation

Let’s start with Chen Chen, who has published two excellent books, and who’s known for his skill with voice across all his poems.

If I had to describe it in a few words, I’d say Chen’s voice is an energetic and appealing mixture of naïf innocence and exuberant inventiveness, even when he’s tackling the most weighty of topics.

But while that might be true overall, to summarize his voice that way misses out how subtly he can adjust his voice to fit different content and create different tones.

To see how this works in practice, let’s look at parts of “In The City,” from Chen’s first book, “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities.”

You can read the poem full here, but for now we just need to look at part of the opening:

            These bridges are a feat of engineering. These pork & chive dumplings
                        we bought together, before hopping on a train
            & crossing bridges, are a feat of engineering. Talking to you, crossing bridges
                        in trains, eating pork & chive dumplings in your bright boxcar
            of a kitchen in Brooklyn, is an engineer’s dream-feat
                        of astonishment.

This opening shows Chen in full-on “fireworks” mode as far as the voice goes.

The first sentence isn’t very spectacular—in fact it’s pretty plain and cliché. But after that, Chen starts to get into gear, as he takes the idea of a “feat of engineering” and riffs on it. Then we see a lot of characteristic features of Chen’s lively voice coming in.

First, there is a playful tone to this voice. For example, in the way the “pork & chive dumplings” become “a feat of engineering.”

Next, the sentences become increasingly elaborate:

The first sentence is a single, simple clause, describing the bridges.
The second borrows the same basic structure (“These pork & chive dumplings ... are a feat of engineering”), but adds two sub-clauses (“we bought together” and “before hopping on a train & crossing bridges”) that make the sentence much more crafted and complex.
Then the third sentence really goes to town, making three entire clauses(“Talking to you,” “crossing bridges in trains,” and “eating pork & chive dumplings in your bright boxcar of a kitchen in Brooklyn”) the collective subject of the simple verb “is”!

These baroque sentences enhance the playful impression we get from the voice, and make us aware that there’s a conscious artfulness in the way this voice uses language.

In addition, Chen introduces hyperbole into his metaphor of the “engineer’s dream-feat /of astonishment.” This again suggests witty artifice and a skilled pleasure with language.

This voice—elaborate, exuberant, self-aware, fun—will go on to dominate the poem.

And there is an extremely good reason for this: the poem is set in a moment of sharing and friendship, so this voice helps us to feel the joy of that time, and to imagine that we are hearing the happy conversation the two friends shared.

In other words, the voice is a key part of how the poem conveys experience and emotion.

But that’s not all this voice does.

Later on in the poem, the voice changes completely.

As Chen recalls a tender moment of childhood connection with his mother (before their relationship became complicated by his coming out), the voice starts to convey a very different mood and feeling:

            The small kitchen, the small bowl of water
                        between us. How we dipped index finger, thumb.
            Sealed each dumpling like tucking in a secret, goodnight.
                        The meat of a memory. A feat of engineering.

Suddenly, the elaboration of details that we saw in the opening (bridges, trains, kitchens, etc.) is reduced mostly to simple statement: “The small kitchen, the small bowl of water.” When the “feat of engineering” recurs in this section, it doesn’t have any playfulness—in fact, it doesn’t have anything alongside it in its sentence.

And far from being long and complex, the sentences here are not even grammatically complete! “The meat of a memory,” for example, has no verb.

It’s true that the little extra “goodnight” does still sound like someone talking, but:

The rest of this voice bears little resemblance to the opening.

And of course, this is deliberate, because here Chen wants to convey a tone of intimacy and loss. Those moments of connection with his mother meant a great deal to him, and they are gone. If he told them in the witty, playful voice, we would not feel that sense of loss.

But changing the voice to suit the content gives this part of the poem its impact.

So, Chen’s poem gives us two lessons for the price of one:

Ways to make two entirely different voices
How effective changing voice partway through a poem can be

Holly Hopkins: Quirky Colloquial

Many, many poets like to write with a voice that you might call “colloquial” or “conversational.”

That is, a kind of language that sounds as though you might hear it in everyday talk.

However, just as there are many ways of talking, there are also many ways of doing a “conversational” voice. (If you’re interested, you might contrast the earthy chattiness of Jill McDonough with the restrained quietness of David Scott.)

But no matter how you do it, the conversational approach raises two problems:

How can you make this voice sound like poetry?
How can you make voice not be boring?

I really admire the way that Holly Hopkins tackles these issues in her first book “The English Summer.”

She mixes up ordinary with idiosyncratic, to make a style that’s distinctively her own.

She also easily includes some great imagery without breaking the naturalness of her voice, so she hits the “poetry” target too.

Here for example is the opening of her poem “Duck”:

            You teach children how to give.
            They tear bread into damp-figured lumps
            for you to shovel up in your snorkeling gear.

Notice how ordinary the opening line sounds! It’s actually a very clever observation and idea—that the ordinary act of feeding bread to ducks at a young age may actually change the rest of our lives by laying a foundation for generosity. But the sentence in which it’s expressed makes no attempt to be flashy: the facts are stated in the most direct way possible, using very common words.

Then Hopkins goes into some extremely casual bits of vocabulary (or diction), in “lumps” and “shovel up.” This reinforces the idea that we’re reading ordinary speech—something genuine and down-to-earth being said.

Yet at the same time, she also includes a really splendid image, of the duck’s feet and bill as “snorkeling gear.” This is pure poetic transformation using metaphor—and she makes it sit comfortably next to the colloquial aspects. (The adjective “damp-figured” is also an example of this.)

If you read the whole poem, you’ll see that she keeps on doing this magic trick, mingling poetic and casual without incongruity or strain.

As well as being impressive in itself, I think this approach also perfectly suits the meaning of the poem.

Hopkins is taking something apparently very ordinary—a plain female Mallard on a local pond—and showing us how it is really extraordinary. And the two elements of her voice help to reinforce both aspects of this.

The conversational parts make the duck sound matter-of-fact, while the poetic parts remind us that it’s not~

David Rivard: Unpoetic poetry

In his poem “By Then,” David Rivard takes another approach to the use of an unadorned kind of voice.

In this excellent poem, a first-person speaker reflects on a time of trouble and loss in their life, that has led them to feel loneliness and shame.

Several things help to convey that tone of sadness, but one of them is definitely the voice.

In many places, Rivard adopts a simple, straightforward language, that sounds like someone pouring out their heart.

Here are some of the things the speaker says:

“I was alone, as I’d always been, but twice as deep for knowing it now.”“
Sometimes it’s OK.... I didn’t know whether this was one of those times; I mean, I didn’t know if I was ‘OK.’”
“I kept thinking a good cry will take care of everything wrong”

Like the conversational parts of Hopkins’ poem, these sentences have the ring of something that could be spoken in talk.

However, unlike Hopkins, Rivard’s use of the conversational voice has much more direct emotional content.

You can feel the ache of “I was alone, as I’d always been,” or the frustrated longing for release of “I kept thinking a good cry will take care of everything wrong.”

So here Rivard shows us how a direct, straightforward voice might be used to add emotional weight and sincerity.

It almost seems as though he’s eschewing the poetic, in order to sound authentic.

But, as with Chen, that’s not the whole story!

You see, I missed out the line breaks.

Here’s how two of those sentences really look:

                        I was alone
            as I’d always been
            but twice as deep for knowing it
            now.

            I kept thinking a good cry
            will take care of everything
            wrong.

Those sentences have the same words, but the line breaks make a big difference, especially in the first example:

The breaks after “alone” and “been” give an extra impact to “I was alone” and “as I’d always been” that both slow the sentence down, and make both phrases seem even more loaded with feeling.
And the line break that puts “now” onto a new line emphasizes how sudden has been the realization he has come to. It creates what sounds almost like a sob, as the end of that sentence gets cut into the next line.

So on the one hand, the line breaks are totally in line with the rest of the voice, making the grief and despair seem more intense.

But on the other hand, the line breaks show that this voice, although plain linguistically, is just as crafted poetically as Chen Chen’s was.

It’s a different form of craft from Chen’s grammatical cadenzas, but it shows just as much conscious control. And if you read the rest of the poem, you’ll see that Rivard also does clever things with time and changes of perspective that make the voice of this poem definitely poetic, as well as authentic.

So, like Hopkins, he ends up with the best of both. And again, I think that voice suits the intent of poem.

The poem is about deep pain, but it is also about thinking through that pain, and working it out in sophisticated ways. And the voice works for both.

Change your voice, change your life? Well, your change poem anyway

I hope this has been helpful, and I’ll leave you with one last thought.

In this article, I have gone through three of the best poems by poets who’ve all been writing for decades.

So if you’re less experienced, you should probably not expect yourself to be able to do what they do—yet!

But I hope you will remember that finding the right voice (or voices) for a poem can transform it.

Next Steps

A great way to learn voice is to borrow some tools from poets whose voice(s) you admire.

Based on your reading of poets, decide on a voice that you’d like to write in.
You are welcome to use Chen, Hopkins, or Rivard as a model!
Find between 2 and 4 techniques that seem important in creating that voice.
For example, are word choices vital, as in Hopkins? Or the lengths and complexity of sentences, as in Chen? Or line breaks, as in Rivard? Or the use of imagery?
(For more ideas, you can review this article.)
Find a topic that seems like it would suit the voice.
In all the examples I’ve explored in this article, matching voice to content has been a big part of how and why they work!
Plan how you will try to borrow those 2 to 4 techniques (from Step 2) for your own poem.
What kinds of words, images, sentences, and line breaks are you aiming to use?
Draft a poem using that voice!
Have a go at conveying your topic using the borrowed voice.
Don’t fret if the voice that emerges isn’t quite what you intended it to be—that’s natural. We can’t hide our own voices, and very few of us can mimic someone else’s voice perfectly!

“Trying on” a range of voices like this will help you learn lots of new ways to make voice, and will make your voice more flexible and varied in all your poems.