voice

“Every once in a while you read a book so good you want to run around the neighborhood, waving it, yelling, "This is it! This is it!" On everyone's shelf, there are those one or two books we keep going back to, keep opening up while the others stopped blooming long ago. Why is it we connect so strongly with some books and not others?” --F. Montesonti

The sentences above were the opening lines of the first lecture of my poetry class.  The theme of the entire class was “voice.”  Mainly, what makes a voice compelling, what aesthetics are we drawn to in a text, which voices do we feel are kindred to our own...and why?  We spent the entire two months of class addressing these questions as we studied a wide array of different voices. 

I think most people would agree that a successful piece of writing is one that they can see themselves in. It’s easy to identify the books and authors we like, but harder to understand why we like them. I believe that unveiling the “why” behind this is a worthwhile endeavor, as it teaches us more about who we are, what our passions are, what message we uniquely feel compelled to communicate to our world, and how we wish to convey it.  

One of the writers I connected with powerfully during the course was Linda Pastan. Pastan quit writing poetry for an entire decade in order to raise her family--a decision she wasn’t happy about--but she felt she couldn’t do both...it was all or nothing. When she started writing again in her thirties, she wrote largely about the domestic scene, and her writing is proof that the mundane, ordinary aspects of life provide sufficient fodder for successful writing, which is good news for me. 

Pastan’s writing is clean and concise.  Every word in her poetry has a purpose. There is no excess, no clutter--each word has to be there. These aesthetics appeal to the minimalist and purist in me, however, under the surface of her simple diction lies the deeper theme within her poetry. In an interview with PBS, Pastan stated that she’s “always been very conscious of the fragility of life and relationships.” This fragility is laced throughout all of her poems, and I think this is why I feel so drawn to her, perhaps because I also find myself overly aware of how tenuous and delicate the balance of life and relationships are...of all the dangers that lurk under the surface of normal, daily life.

The thing about kindred voices is that they give us permission to be ourselves. They tell us we aren’t alone in the world, that there are others out there who experience life in the same way that we do, that ask the same questions, have the same fears, obsessions, and passions. Writing is a risky endeavor. Speaking, saying something close to our hearts, is a risky endeavor. It takes courage. Those brave hearts that are willing to step out on a wire give us the courage to do the same--to be who we are.

This whole thought process reminds me of a book I read last year called Permission to Speak Freely, by Anne Jackson.  She writes,

“Confession by its simplest definition simply means speaking truth or agreeing with what is true.  Sometimes the truth takes ugly shapes, like when we sin or when we’re violated or betrayed by another person.  But other times, truth is something beautiful, and it’s important for both kinds of truth to be spoken.”

In one of her essays, Anne Jackson talks about “The Gift of Going Second.”  This is the gift that we give someone when we go first in confessing truth about ourselves, when we break the silence.  Anne writes, 

“If we can find the courage to confess something, even to just one person, the long-term effects of that confession can move others into rediscovering their faith and their freedom.”   

I think this is why it’s so important for each of us to use our voice in the world.  We each have the power to help others find their voice just by using our own.  I think this is also why it’s so important for us to find kindred voices--those voices that give us courage to speak because we know we aren’t alone in our confessions. There are voices out there that give us the gift of going second, that inspire us to use our own, and when we do that, we can then pass that gift onto someone else.  It’s like this unending chain reaction of discovery and freedom...though not without risk or fear.

Who inspires you to use your voice?  

What story is uniquely yours to share with the world?  

Who are the kindred voices in your life?

What books do you keep going back to on your bookshelf, and why?