“The problem with voice is…! that it has largely tyrannized the lyric poem with its domestic monologue that reduces the poem to “I’m talking to you about me”. The tensions between the speaking and the spoken has tended to get lost in an exhibition of character voicing some inner process of feeling (rarely thinking). Voice is just one of the devices availabe to writers, and most of us use it. But to limit our material (language) to simply and only what one can “say” limits what the forms of language can create. Achieving voice seems to me like buying property; we think we own it. Can, or should we, do that to language? Is it some speaker using the words of the poem, or is it a poem using words, spoken or not? Let the poem do the talking!”
—
Q & A with Fred Wah, Branch Magazine
