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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)?
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. |