DP: Ken: As a background for this interview I dug out my Essays on 
Canadian Writing review of Islands [BTW I can't believe it's been 12 years]. 
There I accused you, too simplistically I think now, of writing in two 
incompatible voices: an educated voice and a gum chewing tourist voice. 
Anyway, a dozen years later it seems to me that in The Commentaries you've 
really managed to take control of "the voice", in fact to produce several 
distinct voices. When you write do you hear your work coming out in different 
voices? Do different voices "inhabit" your work? How have they changed over 
time (assuming they have)?

KN: Well, what I think was going on back is Islands is that there was
a prose voice and a poetry voice. I probably didn't do a good enough job
of keeping the prose voice in the prose and the poetry voice in the poetry,
but that's the division I see. And the prose voice in that book is the
voice of Everyman on vacation, going to bars, chasing women, what
any guy on vacation in the South Seas would do. And the poetic voice
is the voice that speaks of seeing, experiencing something else,
that's edging into the sublime.

Anyone can do narrative, and does. And, if they are properly attuned, 
probably anyone can do poetry, but few do. My students get really 
nervous whenever I try to get them to talk about the "poetical" moments 
in their lives.  One of them actually said to me, "Don't you think you're getting 
a little too personal?" And maybe that's how it feels to someone who 
isn't a poet when you ask them to talk about the great moving 
moments of their lives. Whereas they would have no problem with 
telling you about who they picked up on the beach in Cancun on Spring Break. 

I think if you have one voice as a writer, particularly as a poet, you are sunk. 
There has to be a multiplicity of voices. Yes, I hear my work manifesting 
as different voices. Dashiell Hammett has a line somewhere about 
how you are finished as a writer when you discover that you have
style. Because style is an homogenizing of the voices.  

I don't know if the voices have changed. I think I've gotten better 
at receiving them, so maybe there are more of them now. Most poets, 
if pressed, will admit that they hear voices, that lines pop into 
their heads in particular voices. I hardly ever sit down anymore to 
write a poem cold. Usually there is a voice prompt. Sometimes it's my 
own voice. I will say something, realize that there is really something
 worth exploring there, and set off to write the poem. 
More often, I'm doing something tedious like washing dishes when 
a poem starts to happen in my head. There really is something 
quite mystical about writing poetry, but after a while you just get 
used to the fact that it happens.