The Art of Voice: Poetic Principles and Practice

by Tony Hoagland, Kay Cosgrove (Editor)

Overview

An award-winning poet, teacher, and “champion of poetry” (Neil Genzlinger, New York Times) demystifies the elusive element of voice.

In this accessible and distilled craft guide, acclaimed poet Tony Hoagland approaches poetry through the frame of poetic voice, that mysterious connective element that binds the speaker and reader together. In short, essayistic chapters and an appendix of thirty stimulating exercises, The Art of Voice explores the myriad ways to create a distinctive poetic voice, including vernacular, authoritative statement, speech register, tone-shifting, and using secondary voices. “Rich with lively examples” (New York Times Book Review), The Art of Voice provides a compelling introduction to contemporary poetry and an invaluable guide for any practicing writer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393357912
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/14/2020
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Tony Hoagland (1953—2018) was the award-winning author of seven poetry collections, including the National Book Critics Circle Finalist What Narcissism Means to Me and Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God, and two essay collections. He taught at the University of Houston and conducted a community workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lived.

Kay Cosgrove received a PhD in American literature and creative writing from the University of Houston. She lives in Philadelphia.

Table of Contents

I Introduction: The Living Speaker 1

II Showing the Mind in Motion 7

III The Sound of Intimacy: The Poem's Connection with Its Audience 17

IV The Warmth of Worldliness: The Material-Verbal Imagination 27

V The Tribal Bond of the Vernacular 39

VI Whose Voice Is It?: A Writer's Voice Is Made from Other Writers' Voices 49

VII Voice as Speech Registers: High, Middle, and Low 55

VIII Imported Voices: Bringing Other Speakers into the Poem 67

IX Voices Borrowed from the Environment 79

X "Say It. Say It.": The Voice of Authority 89

XI Conclusion: The Multiplicity of the World and the Heroic Integration of the Self 99

XII For the Teacher and User: On the Use of Prompts, Exercises, and Skill-Building 115

Exercises 119

Complete List of Poems Referenced 161

Acknowledgments 164

Credits 165

Editorial Reviews

"In one of the last critical endeavors of his life, Tony Hoagland lends his extensive Apollonian critical dexterity to answering questions about what makes the who of a poem audible and apt. Anybody who loves poetry—and wants to ponder again that old-fashioned question about the character of our speakers in any genre—has got to read this book."

Adrian Blevins

"Tony Hoagland’s rich scholarly savvy is tethered to the passion of a poet who lived as a poetry teacher. His breezy explications double as intimate, straightforward musings. His insights about audience and tone double as insights about how we speak to one another. The Art of Voice offers poetry as a life force, a means of humanizing a complex world. We are lucky to be left with this work of scrutinizing care and instruction."

Terrance Hayes

"Tony Hoagland was one of our greatest masters of the nuances, complexities, and vagaries of poetic voice. His seductive, deeply moving poems are, as he liked to say, ‘connective,’ beginning in conversation and aspiring to intimacy between a poem’s speaker and its reader. In The Art of Voice, Hoagland meditates on the possibilities available to those who would also aspire to poetic voice…This is a brilliant book by one of this country’s foremost poets."

Kevin Prufer

"Tony Hoagland offers us in his poetry one of the most distinctive voices of our time. Now, in this last work of criticism he completed, he gives us a book focused directly on how a poetic voice is created, how the poet establishes a vivid personality who seems to be standing behind every line, and how in the course of the poem the poet manages to close the distance between speaker and reader to create an intimate bond. Everyone who cares about poetry will profit from this practical and luminous book."

Carl Dennis