The Poet's Voice

[Leah S.]

Upon a Yesterday, The Rustic-but-Talented Poetette
gave all her goods to Whom? The Machiavellian Idiot.

She left her home to go into the Wild: it was her choice
to take this futile, brutal quest to find her Honest Voice,
because The Critic said with certainty, “You always squeak
with no conviction; all I hear is fickle doublespeak!”

So now the Village Idiot, forlorn, remains behind,
declaiming artful words in verse so tastefully combined:
“A fairy tale, akin to Rumpelstiltskin,
in which our brave, romantic heroine
has scaled two sheer, impossible glass peaks
by leaping once for every seven leagues;
sewed severed birds together at the necks
while still unhatched inside their mother’s eggs.
She'll spin her straw herself until it's gold,
and never tell a soul that it's a cheat -
or that a boastful goblin caught her cold,
and figured out she”ll always take the heat.
She’s bound an iron band around her heart
to keep it whole, and thus it can’t be broken.
She’s knitted the eleventh nettle shirt,
and shut her teeth on words she’s never spoken.”

At last our intrepid, marvelous and brave Protagonist,
(because her literary troubles gave her gumption-- Honest!)
arrives at last at home with multitudes of reasons to rejoice.
She’s found her evanescent, genuine, Fickle-but-Authentic Voice!
But only now, she learns how vain and cursed her hopeless race.
Who would have thought that Fool, who was supposed to keep her place
while she was gone, would earn the title: “Idiot Laureate,”
and marry, if only for convenience, her Bestest Sweetheart?

This was written after an advanced university poetry course in which the professor kept telling me, "You need to find your voice." It was a good class otherwise; the best part being that she made us read an enormous amount of poetry.

[Brownlie]

I don't like the find your voice thing as I find it is uninformative. Then again, I don't like how I was taught about metrical feet. You know, with the vocab terms and all.

Upon a Yesterday, The Rustic-but-Talented Poetette
gave all her goods to Whom? The Machiavellian Idiot.

She left her home to go into the Wild: it was her choice
to take this futile, brutal quest to find her Honest  Voice,
because The Critic said with certainty, “You always squeak
with no conviction; all I hear is fickle doublespeak!”

So now the Village Idiot, forlorn, remains behind,
declaiming artful words in verse so tastefully combined: -- Not sure about "so" here because it reads as padded and makes the colon awkward for me.
“A fairy tale, akin to Rumpelstiltskin,
in which our brave, romantic heroine
has scaled two sheer, impossible glass peaks
by leaping once for every seven leagues;
sewed severed birds together at the necks
while still unhatched inside their mother’s eggs.
She'll spin her straw herself until it's gold,
and never tell a soul that it's a cheat
or that a boastful goblin caught her cold,
and figured out she”ll always take the heat.
She’s bound an iron band around her heart
to keep it whole, and thus it can’t be broken.
She’s knitted the eleventh nettle shirt,
and shut her teeth on words she’s never spoken.”

At last our intrepid, marvelous and brave Protagonist,
(because her literary troubles gave her gumption-- Honest!)
arrives at last at home with multitudes of reasons to rejoice.
She’s found her evanescent, genuine, Fickle-but-Authentic Voice!
But only now,  she learns how vain and cursed her hopeless race.
Who would have thought that Fool, who was supposed to keep her place
while she was gone, would earn the title: “Idiot Laureate,”
and marry, if only for convenience, her Bestest Sweetheart?

This was written after an advanced university poetry course in which the professor kept telling me, "You need to find your voice." It was a good class otherwise; the best part being that she made us read an enormous amount of poetry.

[cjchaffin]

Upon a Yesterday, The Rustic-but-Talented Poetette
gave all her goods to Whom? The Machiavellian Idiot.

She left her home to go into the Wild: it was her choice
to take this futile, brutal quest to find her Honest  Voice,
because The Critic said with certainty, “You always squeak
with no conviction; all I hear is fickle doublespeak!”

So now the Village Idiot, forlorn, remains behind,
declaiming artful words in verse so tastefully combined:
“A fairy tale, akin to Rumpelstiltskin,
in which our brave, romantic heroine
has scaled two sheer, impossible glass peaks
by leaping once for every seven leagues;
sewed severed birds together at the necks
while still unhatched inside their mother’s eggs.
She'll spin her straw herself until it's gold,
and never tell a soul that it's a cheat -
or that a boastful goblin caught her cold,
and figured out she”ll always take the heat.
She’s bound an iron band around her heart
to keep it whole, and thus it can’t be broken.
She’s knitted the eleventh nettle shirt,
and shut her teeth on words she’s never spoken.”

At last our intrepid, marvelous and brave Protagonist,
(because her literary troubles gave her gumption-- Honest!)
arrives at last at home with multitudes of reasons to rejoice.
She’s found her evanescent, genuine, Fickle-but-Authentic Voice!
But only now,  she learns how vain and cursed her hopeless race.
Who would have thought that Fool, who was supposed to keep her place
while she was gone, would earn the title: “Idiot Laureate,”
and marry, if only for convenience, her Bestest Sweetheart?

This was written after an advanced university poetry course in which the professor kept telling me, "You need to find your voice." It was a good class otherwise; the best part being that she made us read an enormous amount of poetry.

clever!! i took an advanced composition course at uni where we basically threw the rules of academic writing out the window and focused solely on voice for a semester. it was frustrating and liberating at the same time.

[Leah S.]

I don't like the find your voice thing as I find it is uninformative. Then again, I don't like how I was taught about metrical feet. You know, with the vocab terms and all.

Upon a Yesterday, The Rustic-but-Talented Poetette
gave all her goods to Whom? The Machiavellian Idiot.
She left her home to go into the Wild: it was her choice
to take this futile, brutal quest to find her Honest  Voice,
because The Critic said with certainty, “You always squeak
with no conviction; all I hear is fickle doublespeak!”
So now the Village Idiot, forlorn, remains behind,
declaiming artful words in verse so tastefully combined: -- Not sure about "so" here because it reads as padded and makes the colon awkward for me.
“A fairy tale, akin to Rumpelstiltskin,
in which our brave, romantic heroine
has scaled two sheer, impossible glass peaks
by leaping once for every seven leagues;
sewed severed birds together at the necks
while still unhatched inside their mother’s eggs.
She'll spin her straw herself until it's gold,
and never tell a soul that it's a cheat
or that a boastful goblin caught her cold,
and figured out she”ll always take the heat.
She’s bound an iron band around her heart
to keep it whole, and thus it can’t be broken.
She’s knitted the eleventh nettle shirt,
and shut her teeth on words she’s never spoken.”
At last our intrepid, marvelous and brave Protagonist,
(because her literary troubles gave her gumption-- Honest!)
arrives at last at home with multitudes of reasons to rejoice.
She’s found her evanescent, genuine, Fickle-but-Authentic Voice!
But only now,  she learns how vain and cursed her hopeless race.
Who would have thought that Fool, who was supposed to keep her place
while she was gone, would earn the title: “Idiot Laureate,”
and marry, if only for convenience, her Bestest Sweetheart?
This was written after an advanced university poetry course in which the professor kept telling me, "You need to find your voice." It was a good class otherwise; the best part being that she made us read an enormous amount of poetry.

Answer to Brownlie: yeah I hated it too, hence the whole premise of the poem. I was very frustrated because telling me to 'find my voice' was the most un-helpful piece of critical advice I ever got. As to the 'so' in 'so tastefully,' I was trying for a facetious tone as in, "Oh that is so tasteful!" as a gushing sort of compliment used by persons with pretensions. Perhaps if I put little quotes around it?

---

Upon a Yesterday, The Rustic-but-Talented Poetette
gave all her goods to Whom? The Machiavellian Idiot.

She left her home to go into the Wild: it was her choice
to take this futile, brutal quest to find her Honest  Voice,
because The Critic said with certainty, “You always squeak
with no conviction; all I hear is fickle doublespeak!”

So now the Village Idiot, forlorn, remains behind,
declaiming artful words in verse so tastefully combined:
“A fairy tale, akin to Rumpelstiltskin,
in which our brave, romantic heroine
has scaled two sheer, impossible glass peaks
by leaping once for every seven leagues;
sewed severed birds together at the necks
while still unhatched inside their mother’s eggs.
She'll spin her straw herself until it's gold,
and never tell a soul that it's a cheat -
or that a boastful goblin caught her cold,
and figured out she”ll always take the heat.
She’s bound an iron band around her heart
to keep it whole, and thus it can’t be broken.
She’s knitted the eleventh nettle shirt,
and shut her teeth on words she’s never spoken.”

At last our intrepid, marvelous and brave Protagonist,
(because her literary troubles gave her gumption-- Honest!)
arrives at last at home with multitudes of reasons to rejoice.
She’s found her evanescent, genuine, Fickle-but-Authentic Voice!
But only now,  she learns how vain and cursed her hopeless race.
Who would have thought that Fool, who was supposed to keep her place
while she was gone, would earn the title: “Idiot Laureate,”
and marry, if only for convenience, her Bestest Sweetheart?

This was written after an advanced university poetry course in which the professor kept telling me, "You need to find your voice." It was a good class otherwise; the best part being that she made us read an enormous amount of poetry.

clever!! i took an advanced composition course at uni where we basically threw the rules of academic writing out the window and focused solely on voice for a semester. it was frustrating and liberating at the same time.

cj, please share more about the liberating part. My professor was singularly uncommunicative about what exactly she meant by 'voice.'

[cjchaffin]

we paid more attention to individual syntax and diction, playing around with colloquialisms and vernacular. it was a pretty eclectic gathering of students from diverse backgrounds and areas, so some of the results were pretty interesting.