Voice

Toby, at DivaMarketing, says:

Sometimes when I come across a new blog, I click on very first post and read a few of the beginning writings. Then I'll skip back up to the current level. It helps give me a sense of the person.

You've now been blogging for about six weeks (as part of this course). Try this experiment on yourself. (And plan to try it again at the end of the semester.) Anything interesting to note?

When I do this comparison on my own blog, I notice not so much a change in my written "voice," but I do notice what Toby might call "growth" in what I do. I've used a lot of visuals, lately, for example. I'd also like to think I've got some "texture" in my blog, that I don't always do the same thing, that the blog as a whole is a sum of at least a few parts, not just the same old thing stacked up.

What *is* voice, anyway? When we say we like the "voice" of a given blog, what are we talking about? Can you give examples?

And would anyone argue that it could be possible to have an interesting, highly readable blog that doesn't have what we conventionally think of as "voice"?

Is wabi-sabi about voice, for example?

Rod Padgett, a poet, has a somewhat satirical poem called "Voice." Another contemporary poet, Bruce Covey, has this to say about the poem and about the concept of voice:

I think the idea of a singular “voice” is something that many poets try to achieve, something that’s taught in many graduate writing programs. My feeling is that a poem is so many things—a visual, rhythmic, structured text invested with some sort of intention—that voice seems like a rather arbitrary quality to make absolute or constant. I prefer a more elaborate matrix in which form and content, visual and oral, are always interrelated and dependent upon one other. I’m not sure how I could—or why I would—write in a single voice all of the time. I applaud those who wish to and do. I’m a fan of Ron Padgett’s poem “Voice,” which ends, “I hope I never find mine. I / wish to remain a phony the rest of my life.” That said, I do believe my poems are united in different ways, particularly within each book.

Can/should a blog have voices rather than voice?

[And I also want to explore this theme today: Close Encounters. More on that in class.]