Finding Your Voice

When he wrote, “How forcible are right words!” (Job 6:25) and “Doth not the ear try words?” (Job 12:11), the poet who gave us the book of Job might have been discussing the very craft he was engaged in. Words are the stock in trade for poets. Your poems are enriched as you master your vocabulary. Notice I say “your” vocabulary. This is not the same as amassing a large vocabulary like Robert Browning did at the beginning of his writing career. It is learning how to get the most mileage out of the vocabulary you already have. Another way to say the same thing might be “finding your own voice.”

Rhyme and meter used to dominate English poetry. Today free verse is the dominant form. Even more distinguishing, however, is the energy of a personal voice in contemporary poetry—poets like William Stafford, James Wright, Marvin Bell, Leslie Norris, Madeleine DeFrees, Dixie Partridge, to name a few. When we read their poems we feel we are conversing with a friend, someone who lives a normal life from day to day just as we do. We don’t feel intimidated by their poetry like we sometimes feel in the classroom when we are asked to study “great” literature. We say, “Why, I could write like that myself.”

And I believe we can.

Let us begin by deciding just what makes something a “poem.” Is it rhyme and meter? Not always—in fact, most poems don’t rhyme anymore. Is it image and metaphor? Image and metaphor are usually present, but you also find these things in good prose. Is there always something about the seriousness of the subject or the occasion that sets poetry apart? Of course not. As far back as Robert Burns we find poems written “To a Mouse,” even “To a Louse,” that still appear in our anthologies. William Stafford wrote an “Ode to Garlic”; James Wright called one of his poems “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.” It seems neither subject nor occasion need be restricted. Today’s poems are written about anything and at any time. The energy and honesty of the poet’s voice are what make them succeed.

How do we begin? What do we need to study to write a poem?

I make two assumptions when I begin teaching a new class: first, that my students already have the language skills they need to write good poetry; second, that most of their poems will contain echoes borrowed from bad poetry, because too often that is the poetry we hear as we grow up. Good poetry requires a certain amount of attention that many of our teachers aren’t willing to demand of us.

To deal with the first assumption I encourage students to write frequently—every day, if possible. Don’t insist on having a great idea before you decide to write. Begin to write, and your chances for coming up with a good idea are already increased 100 percent. Don’t start with a predetermined subject. Pick subjects at random. What do you see around you? What can you hear? Suppose the last phrase someone said to you was the beginning of a new poem. Begin with that phrase and see what ideas follow as the words begin to talk back and forth to each other. When we think too long or too hard before we even begin to write, we eliminate many ideas that might very well become good poems.

Start writing with no commitment that the results have to be important or even a successful poem. Write like a watercolorist paints—quickly and with great energy. There’s always another blank sheet of paper waiting for you. If the flow of words for one idea begins to dry up, leap into another idea. Don’t worry about the transition at this point. Maybe the relationship will appear later. Maybe you will end up with two separate poems. The thing to do is keep the words flowing and afterward decide how to revise them into poems.

The second assumption is harder to cope with. Language begins with imitation. As we become more and more educated, we learn more and more conventional forms of language so that, even when we write naturally, we find ourselves following these forms. Whenever we borrow a phrase from someone else, we get an echo. Echoes are never as strong as original sounds. When what we borrow is already an echo, we get a cliche. Cliches are so weak by the time we borrow them that they hardly have any energy left at all: they make our language sound tired and lifeless. Cliches pop into our minds especially when we use figures of speech.

Many poetic forms themselves have by now become cliches. How many poems do you know written in four-line, four-beat stanzas with rhymes at the ends of every other line? Doesn’t that suggest this form might be a bit shopworn by now? Don’t misunderstand me and think I have no admiration for good formal poems. I’m just saying that too often we let the traditional forms trap us into more echoes than we would come up with on our own. Poets used to master the forms first and then experiment with free verse. Today I think we need to find our own voice first. Then we can apply it to free verse or formal verse, whichever we prefer. If we begin with imitating the forms, we may never be able to separate ourselves from the echoes that engulf us.

Here is an exercise to help combat our tendency to resort to cliches instead of coining new metaphors. Make a list of some well-known figures of speech: smart as a whip; weak as a kitten; wise as an owl; sly as a fox; slick as a whistle, etc. Now change each of the final nouns to something else. Don’t ponder your answers—let them be less than ponderous. Synonyms don’t count. Just the first new thing that comes to mind: smart as a dill pickle; weak as cobwebs; wise as an empty Wheaties box; sly as Uncle George; slick as the ice on campus. Even if you don’t have an Uncle George, the new phrases already have more energy than the old, energy that manifests your own unique personality, the voice that is particularly you. Try it again with new endings. In a class of 20 students, by the time we get into the second level, everybody’s answers are different. Try changing the first word of each cliche: limp as a whip; bewildered as a kitten; sensitive as an owl; aloof as a fox; penetrating as a whistle, etc. The idea is to find new combinations out of your own experience, your own impulses, your own voice.

Another way to get new combinations is to make a list of 15 or 20 normal adjective-noun combinations: blue sky; red wagon; tired feet; falling snow; windy hills; squished banana, etc. Now move each adjective down a notch: blue wagon; red feet; tired snow; falling hills; windy banana; squished sky. One more notch and we get blue feet; red snow; tired hills, etc. The longer the list, the more fun it becomes. Some of the combinations are startling, but they are all related: they all come out of your own subconscious and for that reason possess an underlying unity, a unity that is your own voice. Maybe you will see some that suggest a title for a poem or a good first line:

Let the story find its own way from there. It doesn’t have to be a true story, one that actually happened. As you respond to the opportunities the words present to you and follow the flow, you begin to create a new story like those in William Stafford’s Stories That Could Be True.

Let’s go back to one of our first questions—what should you study to become a poet? I would say study whatever interests you. If you are into mushrooms, there are some great words used to describe various species of mushrooms: pubescent, deliquescent, polypore, boletus, chanterelle. If you are a mechanic, think of all the parts of an engine that have nice sounds: accelerator, carburetor, distributor, king pin, pinion gear, rack and pinion steering. Some of them even rhyme. These are the words of the world you live in. Your voice can give them poetic life.

What about other poets? Should you study them? Certainly. But be cautious where you begin to imitate. Never imitate deliberately, and try to be influenced only by poets who have published during your own lifetime. Their language will probably be similar to yours. Elizabethan English is out of fashion now except in the Bible.

In poetry, nouns are the strongest words. Verbs are tricky because sometimes they carry too much energy for their context and jump out of the poem. Adjectives are weaker because they only modify nouns, except those adjectives that are derived from nouns like brick wall, pine woods, or adjectives of color that function almost like nouns. Adverbs are the weakest, especially -ly adverbs. E. B. White says “Do not dress words up by adding ly to them, as though putting a hat on a horse” (William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, 3d ed., New York: Macmillan, 1979, p. 76).

One-syllable words have more energy than words with several syllables. For example, use house instead of edifice. One-syllable words focus their energy because by themselves they are always stressed.

This brings me to my final point. Poetry uses the language of emotion; prose the language of reason. Words fit in a poem because of how they feel, not how they explain. That is where rhyme and meter come into play. They make the music of our language that amplifies our feelings. That music is inherent in all words no matter where they come from. As William Stafford says, “All syllables rhyme, somewhat. There is a closer relationship between any two syllables than between one syllable and silence.” Trust that relationship. Be sensitive also to internal rhymes and things like alliteration and assonance. Don’t place every rhyme at the end of a line where it can detonate at the expense of everything else around it.

Let’s go back to my sister and her blue wagon. Sky and squished alliterate. There is assonance in recognition and red, and rhyme in spring and lingering. The music is going to be there as you listen to your own voice trying to sing. And if you let it wander where it wants to go, your story will find its own way to some type of closure:

For a finishing touch we look for a title. Let’s see. We could call it “Spring Days beside the Snake River when I Was Nine” if we want to emphasize the setting. Or “Constellations” if we like the feel of that nice word showing up just as we were about to end. I tend to like images. For a while I think I will call my poem “The Blue Wagon.” Tomorrow I can always change.

Talking about Poetry

Rhyme: When the accented vowel and all the sounds after it in a word are repeated in another word (cat and hat, spitefully and delightfully).

Internal rhyme: When one or both rhyming words are within the line.

End rhyme: When both rhyming words are at the ends of lines.

Alliteration: The repetition of initial consonant sounds (safe and sound).

Assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds (mad as a hatter).

Meter: A regular rhythmic pattern in verse.

Free verse: Verse that does not have a metrical pattern.

Imagery: Sense experience represented through language.

Figure of speech: Any way of saying something other than the ordinary way. An intentional departure from the normal pattern to create a fresh expression.

Cliche: An expression that has been used so much that its freshness has worn off.

Metaphor: An implied comparison between things that are essentially different.

Author’s voice: An author’s unique style of expression.

Reminders for Poets

1. Find your own voice first; then try the forms.

2. Don’t imitate deliberately.

3. Don’t always try to write about something “important.”

4. Let words of your poem find their own subjects.

5. Rely on the strength of nouns and one-syllable words.

6. Let the story find its own way home.

7. Poetry is the language of emotion.

8. There’s always another blank sheet of paper waiting.