That Poetic Voice We Sometimes Use

The premise of a New York Times piece titled "What's With That Voice People Use When Reciting Poetry?" is that there’s a distinctive, stylized way many poets read their work aloud.

This is often called “Poet Voice,” and the article digs into what it is and why it’s so common. If you attend poetry readings and if you yourself read poetry aloud, you probably have encountered this Poet Voice.

It can be a slow cadence, with dramatic pauses, a lilting or monotone delivery, or a sing-songy inflection. It is not that person's natural speaking voice. Poet Voice is not meant as a compliment.  

On the page, poetry is quiet, private, and intimate. There is some "voice" in our head when we read silently. Is that the voice we use when we read aloud?

Do you hear this different way of reading as comforting and familiar, or as awkward?

We know there are poets who turn reading into a performance rather than language meant to connect.

Poets aren’t generally "performers," but still can fall into this same vocal pattern.

That article isn’t arguing for or against Poet Voice. It’s asking: what is this “weird poetic monotone rhythmic thing,” why does it persist, and how does voice change what a poem means when it moves from page to performance. The general takeaway from the article is that Poet Voice isn’t tied to one generation or school of poetry. It shows up at “the open mic and the Pulitzer podium alike,” and many poets admit they dislike it even while using it.

Here are a few poets who get mentioned as examples of “Poet Voice,” either in the *NYT* piece’s broader conversation or in the related analysis it draws on:

Louise Glück reads her poem "The Wild Iris." The Nobel laureate’s readings are frequently described as having that “precious, lilting cadence” with down-slurring line endings

Robert Bly is a poet who certainly reads his poem in an interesting way. I've heard him at reading read the same poem several times in a row, as if he thought we missed something the first time. Bly’s readings are faster, more emphatic, and less singsong. It's unusual but probably not what is meant as Poet Voice.

Robert Pinsky also has a distinctive way of reading. Is it Poet Voice? Here he reads "The Forgetting."

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A Blessing

James Wright and Robert Bly began a friendship through letters. Eventually, Wright would visit Bly's farm in western Minnesota and fall in love with it. “I think your farm is the first such place I have ever really liked — it is beautifully mysterious and very much its own secret place.”

He began taking the train out there every Friday after classes, and staying for the weekend, sleeping in an old converted chicken coop, which was heated by an oil stove.

On Saturday mornings, he would come into the farmhouse for breakfast, go back out, and return at lunch with a poem. He said of the Blys: “They loved me and they saved my life. I don’t mean the life of my poetry, either.”

One day Bly and Wright were driving home from another friend’s farm when they passed two horses in a pasture. They stopped and got out to see the horses, and in the car Wright began writing a poem in a spiral notebook. That became one of his most beloved poems, “A Blessing.”

A Blessing

by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

from Collected Poems