However, it’s also one of the most important elements of poetry—so having at least some understanding of it is a very good idea.
So that’s why in this article I’m going to try to tackle:
This is a huge topic! Nevertheless, I will do my best to make it clear, without oversimplifying.
First, let’s do an easy part: why voice is important.
To help with this, let’s think about how voice works in talk.
When we talk with someone, or even when we just listen to them (as on a podcast), the words they say are only part of what their talk means to us.
A great deal of the meaning of talk is give by elements that have to do with sound, like how fast they talk, or how they use intonation (going higher or lower in pitch, like music), or their accent, or their emotional tone.
All of these things add immensely to how we understand what they say, because they give us clues to things like:
A really great illustration of this is how we easily create pictures in our minds of people whom we’ve only ever heard, not seen—people on radio shows or podcasts. We have a precise image of how they look, and the kind of person they are, and that’s largely from how they say what they say.
Voice in poetry is very similar. Although it contains a lot of complicated parts, that I’m going to start on in a minute, the idea behind it is the same as for talk:
Voice in poetry gives us a feel for who is speaking these words—and how they feel
Without voice, poetry would be some kind of abstract word game, unrelated to emotions, relationships, self-investigation, or what makes us human.
With voice—or voices—you can move a reader, and interest them in many subtle ways.
And if you know about the ways voice is created in poetry, you can play with them, and so learn to create a wider range of voices of your own—though this is perhaps a topic for another article, as I think this one’s going to be long enough!
There are dozens of possible things that can make voice in any individual poem, and there isn’t even any agreement on what they are!
So the list I’m going to make is personal, and partial.
However, do not despair! Like most human beings, you already have a good intuitive idea of what makes “voice,” from your experience talking with people—so if in doubt, try to use that to clarify how one poem’s voice feels different from another.
I’m just trying to add some extra knowledge to what you probably already sense.
I said above that spoken voice is more about sound than words, but that wasn’t the whole story—I was simplifying a bit. It’s more the case that we tend to be more aware of the sounds of someone’s voice, precisely because we can hear them.
However, it’s also the case that the kinds of words we choose can tell others a lot about who we are and how we feel.
This applies especially to poetry on the page, where there isn’t a voice actually speaking to us, so we have to search harder to clues as to who we’re hearing. Word choices are one of those clues.
Much of the time in English, we have a choice between more and less formal ways of saying the same meaning.
For example, we might call a time when we eat:
Whether we choose formal or casual tells the reader something about how you feel and who you are.
So if you write the same poem using formal vocabulary, then switch it to casual language, you will definitely change its voice.
Register is the idea that certain kinds of words tend to go together.
For example, a poem about illness might tend to use words from a medical register, to do with doctors, hospitals, medications, and so on.
As humans, we usually have a subset of registers that we’re expert in, like the language that goes with a certain sport, or cooking, or a form of work.
Therefore, the register you use can tell readers something about the kind of person who’s speaking—what they know, what they care about.
Additionally, switching registers can be an interesting way to suggest different voices or people speaking in a poem. We’ve seen this happen many times in the poems we’ve studied for Poetry Parlor.
Some registers are also signals of “where we come from,” in cultural and social terms, as well as geographical.
So for example, Linton Kwesi Johnson used the vocabulary of Caribbean English extensively in his poems—making a voice that sounds utterly different from the white British poets who were his contemporaries.
I think of this one as related to diction, but instead of being about the kinds of word choices you make, it’s about your imaginative choices.
As always, there are several options here.
Most poets are somewhere between these two extremes—and of course, they may also vary their approaches from poem to poem.
This is another word-based element of voice that we may not notice so much in spoken language. But in poetry, it’s crucial.
Syntax means how you arrange words in sentences. There are some grammatical rules, of course, but you also have a great deal of freedom—especially in poetry, where rules are there to be broken!
In general terms, how the sentences of the poem direct the flow of meaning can affect the voice profoundly. Syntax is a VAST topic, but here are a few of the most straightforward ways changing syntax can change voice.
Imagine reading a poem. It is all short sentences. None has more than six words. They cover the whole page. But they never lengthen.
Now imagine reading a poem where the sentences flow, they luxuriate, they open and spread over the page like indolent sunbathers, they flow like fresh warm honey over the edge of the beekeeper’s pail, and they pour sweet sun into your hungry ears.
No doubt you noticed that the “feel” of those two paragraphs was quite different! The first is staccato; the second mellifluous and rolling.
Each of these approaches creates a different voice, and this will work in poems too.
Although somewhat allied to length—it’s hard to make a very short sentence complex—complexity is also its own thing.
For example, try these two sentences for size:
Although both are long, the second one has a much more intricate construction. The first one is simpler, and its voice sounds fairly direct and “flat.” But in the second sentence, the various clauses, separated by all those commas, introduce new multiple sub-directions for the thought, and make a voice that perhaps we might call “fussy.”
Those two sentences I gave above are also a great example of how much voice can depend on how smoothly we let our words run on, and how much we stop and start them.
My first sentence above flows smoothly; my second sentence is staccato. It never really gets going before a comma comes along and breaks it up.
This, too, is a big factor in the different voices of these sentences.
Last one on sentences.
Sentences in poems can bend grammatical rules, as I said above.
So poets might use lots of fragments, that don’t form full meaning as a sentence. This might perhaps create a voice that sounds uncertain, or breathless, or rushed.
On the other hand, poets often also use run-on sentences, by not putting a period/full stop at the places where sentences end grammatically. This might create a voice that sounds enthusiastic, or overwhelmed, or full of passion.
Even though punctuation is often tied up with sentences, sometimes it can be an independent element of voice.
There are three basic strategies here:
Underuse is the oldest and most common form, and can create a rushing voice, as in French poet Apollinaire (who did it first)
Overuse can add a staccato or broken voice to parts of a poem.
Innovative use is more and more common now, for example the use of the slash mark / in the middle of lines. I find it makes mostly a jagged, unsettling kind of voice.
Although made of words, of course poetry has sound-based elements, just like spoken voice. And these are also powerful parts of voice.
Rhythm is another VAST topic by itself, so I don’t propose to go into technicalities here. For now, I’ll just point out that all poems have rhythm because they all have stressed and unstressed syllables, which are what make up rhythm.
But of course there are many kinds of rhythm, each likely to produce a different voice.
Every different rhythm we hear suggests a different emotional tone or attitude, and that of course is crucial for the voice we hear too.
Rhyme, alliteration, assonance, and consonance are all techniques based on the repetitions of various sounds.
The possible effects of sound on voice are too complex to sum up easily. I might say that the more assonance and consonance you use, the more beautiful and elegant your voice is likely to feel, and I might have a chance of being right.
But with rhyme and alliteration, the effects can be quite varied.
Beside words and sounds, page-based poetry of course also has its shape on the page as another vital aspect—and naturally, this can affect voice too!
I’ve created a few articles about how short lines and long lines do very different things to meaning. They also, of course, can do the same for voice.
I am tempted, for example, to say that short lines might create a slower, more halting voice, while longer lines are more fluid.
However, much depends on how the lines and the sentences interact.
If for example your long lines are as full of commas and sub-clauses as my earlier example, then you can say goodbye to flow! An example of that might be C. K. Williams, who used long lines a lot, but usually filled them with mental debate going back-and-forth, creating a probing, uncertain voice.
And if your short lines each contain a neat grammatical unit, as often in Charles Simic, then the voice might sound definite, not halting.
Further, line breaks matter a lot.
Line breaks that snap apart bits of meaning we want to keep together, such as a noun and its adjective, probably make a rough, uneven sort of voice.
Whereas line breaks that always coincide with punctuation—called end-stopping—may create a definite, contained kind of voice, even a stiff one.
The page is wide, and some poets make full use of it. By scattering words and lines across the white space, we can also change the voice.
We often talk about “tone of voice” in speech, so it make sense to consider it in poetry too.
And indeed, a lot of what I’ve covered already only makes full sense in the context of the overall tone of a poem.
As you’ve probably noticed, every technique I’ve covered can create multiple voices—so how can we tell which ones are more appropriate to the poem?
And an answer is, we work out the voice by getting a feel for the tone of the poem. Once we can tell if a poem is sad, or questioning, or ecstatic, then we can use that to tell what the voice is doing.
But the problem with that is, often we use the voice to work out the tone! So we need to know the voice first…
In practice though, we humans are used to dealing with this conundrum, and we do it expertly—without even noticing, in fact. Because we talk all the time, we’re very good at working out how words and voice interact to create emotional tone, and also the other way around, how overall tone changes our understanding of what’s said and how it’s said.
For reading voice intuitively, you are already an expert!
And I hope that my little (long?!) survey of the nitty-gritty of voice in poetry has given you some new knowledge.
Now I hope you’ll practice making deliberate changes to the voice(s) in your poems, using some of these tools. Play around and see how it all works!
Voice can seem like a minefield—but it’s actually quite simple to play with and learn, as this exercise shows.
