Jack Foley gave me two versions of The Seafarer, an Anglo-Saxon poem translated by Edwin Morgan and Ezra Pound. Morgan’s version was an easy read, as his was written in modern vernacular. Pound’s character came off as the voice of the ancient. His words were succinct and crafted, and carried a sense of drama throughout.
The same seafarer was a lamenting old man in one and a stately persona in another. Except for a few images, these pieces gave me two distinct impressions of the character.
In school we are taught to write “properly”, but what does it take to write powerfully, to achieve a distinct style and voice?
Good comments on the two versions–thanks. Perhaps it should be “distinctive styles, distinctive voices.” Diane di Prima from her “Recollections of My Life as a Woman”:
But now, as my emotional life came to a strong, though temporary, focus—this new work, too, came to a fruition: a powerful voice found its way through me and into the world. The first of many voices that would speak through me, now that I no longer sought to control the poem.
For isn’t it *not* that we “find our voice” as poetry teachers are so fond of saying, but rather that voices find us, and perhaps we welcome them? Is not poetry a dance from possession to possession—“obsession” in the full sense the word had in nineteenth-century magick? We are “ridden” as by the gods.