The Voice: a response to Emily Tesh
by and published in Edition Four of Pomegranate
In the last issue of Pomegranate, I read with interest Emily Tesh’s article on the amorphous and what she deemed inhibiting influence of “voice” in a poem, which is so lauded in the newspaper literary supplements we all waste our Sundays reading. Whilst I found it a refreshing re-evaluation of such an overused term, there was something in it that did not quite sit comfortably with me. Perhaps I am being overly conservative, but I am still nostalgically clinging to what I believe to be the best and only word to describe this vague concept.
Yet vague as it may be – “lazy” and “fuzzy” is how Emily Tesh describes it – we all have one. Maybe it is only when this transcendent voice is applied to a piece of writing that it gains its “near-mysticism”, as certainly there is nothing enigmatic about the voice with which an opponent whispers “checkmate” as the rook slides onto c5 or the voice that blasts through the school courtyard to let me know that I have left my keys or whatnot in some classroom yet again. There is nothing enigmatic about it because I always know these people, I have always heard their voices before – and after I have read a couple of collections by a specific poet, I like to feel that I know him or her. I like to feel that I recognise his or her voice, because it is only an appealing voice that will entice me onto a third collection. After all, how can I ever justifiably claim to like the work of any author in its entirety unless there is some thread running through their work, linking their first poem to their very last?
Therefore, keeping to the same voice need not be laziness and neither does the concept have to be confined to the depths of indefinable mysticism. Using our voices, we can order coffee, we can speak French, we can discuss the potential for a love affair between Brown and Blair… none of these actions seem particularly mystical. So why not convert this voice into poetry? It will make the experience more comfortable, rather than trying to force an abrasive manner when in fact you are all charm, or a mild philosophical tone when you are actually as blunt as a cricket bat. In my opinion, the subject matter interests the poet, but it is the voice that is the poet. To illustrate, I do not demand that my friends inhale helium every so often if they are to maintain my interest. After a while, I find it hurts one’s throat and, frankly, they would sound strained and ridiculous. Similarly, I do not demand that writers do the literary equivalent.
Take one of my very favourite poets, for example, the inimitable John Donne. He spent his early years chasing young women around seventeen century London and persuading them to sleep with him (with what seems to have been a great deal of success), before writing witty metaphysical poems to accompany the experience and read out to all his friends. The result was poems such as this:
“Licence my roaving hands, and let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdome, safeliest when with one man man’d,
My Myne of precious stones, My Emperie,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!”
He spent the second part of his life as the Dean of St. Paul’s, delivering what were widely believed to be the best sermons around, and in deadly fear for what awaited him in the afterlife (understandably!). As a result, his poems took on a rather holier form:
“But let them sleepe, Lord, and mee mourne a space,
For, if above all these, my sinnes abound,
‘Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace,
When we are there; here on this lowly ground,
Teach mee how to repent; for that’s as good
As if thou’hadst seal’d my pardon, with thy blood.”
To interpret, he is here asking God to delay the resurrection to give him time to repent as he has committed more sins that anyone else. So as anyone can see, although the subject matter has changed dramatically, the essential voice remains – he has retained his old arrogance and self-assuredness to the extent that he actually has the temerity to ask God directly to put off what is probably the most important event in his calendar. Yet this consistency is precisely why I love Donne’s religious poetry as much as his love poetry. He found his voice in his youth, and it worked. Despite being terrified and acting with rather more prudence than before, he is still the same man who, earlier in his life, had no compunction about comparing his erection to a soldier, in personality if in nothing else. I cannot help but feel that, if he had not retained this voice, he would have become yet another faceless divine poet.
In her lovely simile, Emily Tesh describes our lives as “like a cloud of electrons without the nucleus” and therefore deems that different voices are necessary to deal with these electrons. I have to disagree. I believe that, if one thing can be the nucleus and give all these electrons something consistent around which to float, it is us – our personalities, our voices. Each individual will have to deal with different situations, that much is inevitable, but we unfailingly do so in a way that is characteristic of ourselves. The equivalent in poetry is sitting back and comfortably offering one’s own musings and verses, safe in the knowledge that you will not be remembered as someone who forced a voice and forsook their instinct at every corner.
Sophie Yeo
Sophie Yeo is an eighteen-year-old girl who’s not quite decided yet whether to be English or Welsh. She has twice been one of the Foyle commended poets, and next year she hopes to go to university to inevitably write lots of essays. She likes Evelyn Waugh, Cicero, the famous speech in “The Merchant of Venice” and trying to memorize lots of facts about Richard III. One day, she hopes to own a vineyard in the Val-de-Loire.