Writing in someone else's voice

Two poems that maybe don't sound like me

Photo by Anna on Unsplash

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[First posted in October 2023 … so, practically new again.]

If you’ve been reading my posts for a while, you know what my poems usually sound like — how I use language and cadence and far too many commas and semicolons and the occasional em-dash (AI be damned) to connect images, thoughts, and feelings. And … yeah, that’s how my poems usually sound. Except for every now and then, when one comes out in a different voice altogether.

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NEIGHBORHOOD PARK                                                       1996


Swan balanced on one broad black foot
neck coiled on chest
beak tucked under wing
black eye blinking slow
body swaying like a cradle

Ducks gabble and preen
green-jewel heads, blue wing bars
orange feet, white tail feathers
white trim
circle-wakes when they dabble
triangle-wakes when they swim

Scraggy gulls, dirty gray and white
bully the ducks
hooked yellow beaks
grey legs longer than duck legs

Pigeons wheel in flocks
against a pigeon-colored sky
sparrows tick in the bushes

Reeds and alder by the water
mustard flowers gold in the weeds
empty playground
full tennis court
lake-smells, soggy squelch 
on the path of runners’ feet, 
murmurs of traffic south and west
of mist above, tangled
in limp shaggy eucalyptus limbs.

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DEFINITIONS, DANCING                                                          2006

[Original definitions found in the American Heritage Dictionary.]

Seemingly effortless
beauty or charm
of movement, form, or proportion.

Aglaia, Thalia, Euphrosyne.

A quality pleasing
for (seemingly effortless) charm or refinement.

A sense of fitness or (form) propriety
(for a duchess, a duke, an archbishop).

Disposition to be generous, helpful;
clemency, mercy (proportion), goodwill.

A favor rendered (effortless?) by one
who need not do so (mercy!); indulgence.

(His) Temporary exemption or
(Her) immunity;
(Your) reprieve.

Mythology:  three sister goddesses,
Aglaia, Thalia, Euphrosyne,
dispense (movement) charm (form)
and beauty (proportion).

Divine love and (seemingly effortless)
protection, freely bestowed; a state of being
sanctified by God’s favor (who need
not do so); an excellence (charm) or power granted
by God (disposed to be generous, helpful).

A prayer (trill) of blessing or thanksgiving
before or after a meal (bestowed freely).

Aglaia, Thalia, Euphrosyne.

A title (Your Grace) and form (Her Grace) of address
for a duke, duchess (Your Grace), or archbishop
(a sense of fitness, propriety).

Musical ornament, appoggiatura,
a trill (of thanksgiving or blessing).

Seemingly effortless
beauty or charm
of movement, form, or proportion.

His grace. Her grace. Your grace.
An excellence granted by God.

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Right? These two don’t sound like other poems you’ve read here. Nor do they sound anything like each other.

“Neighborhood Park” was written during my Failed Novelist period, when I was without a defined writing project for the first time in several years and had taken to carrying a notebook around and playing games on its pages, hoping to jump-start any kind of writing whatever. The poem started life as clumps of words scribbled haphazard on a page of my notebook as I sat near the little lake in a neighborhood park — tiny, random notes about anything I could see, hear, smell. In the moment, it was something to do with my attention and my pen; when I went back to the page later I realized that some of those tiny notes had life in them, so I arranged the liveliest ones into actual lines on another page, without elaborating on them or trying to connect them or even make them into complete sentences. When I finished it was, well, maybe somebody’s poem. Mine, though? Huh.

I wrote “Definitions, Dancing” ten years later, when I was supposed to be writing a column of conversational, inspirational prose for my church’s monthly newsletter. (That was a fun gig. I can’t believe I had the nerve.) Our editor had suggested “grace” as a theme; I found not a single thought in my head on the topic of grace, so I did what all good dictionary nerds do when they need a jump-start. The moment I read them, I could hear that set of definitions singing like an ensemble number in a Sondheim revue — lyrics, meanings, melodies, cris-crossing and arguing and coinciding and building. I grabbed a pencil, listened as hard as I could … and ended up with a poem constructed by rearranging someone else’s words. Is that even legal? Got me. Is it … mine? Kind of, yeah.

I’m bemused by these two poems, and grateful to them. They’re two more reminders that when I don’t know what to do next in my writing, one option is to, well, fool around. Talk in somebody else’s voice for a while. Grab a handful of words and images and stick ‘em together like Legos. Play.