Ellen Bryant Voigt’s reputable collection of poems title Kyrie is an endeavor of heartfelt
experimentation in the efficacy of voice in evoking the microcosm, the personal
struggles, of a larger tragedy. Her collection is a series of recollections and
thoughts projected from the minds of patients caught in the Influenza Epidemic
of 1917. What is fascinating in this collection is the way that Voigt handles
the myopic of different people and conveys individuality in each one of their
voices while simultaneously reprising specific characters. In her distinctions,
each poem, albeit similar in length and structure, have different fashions of
expressing themselves and the tragedies that they invoke to the reader.
Voigt is
a master of throwing voices, employing a repertoire of distinct ideas or
abstractions that are fed through differing patterns and ways of speaking. It
is actually almost safe to say that each different character (as opposed to not
every because some do reoccur) is perfectly distinguishable from the previous.
For instance, take the two poems on pages 26 and 27, the first reading like:
My brothers had it, my sister, parceled out
Among the relatives, I had it exiled
in the attic room. Each
afternoon
Granfather came to the top stair, said
“How’s my chickadee”, and left me sweet
And the poem on page 27 reads:
O God, Thous hast cast us off, Thou has scattered us
Thou hast been displeased, O turn to us again.
Thou hast made the earth to tremble; Thou hast broken it;
Heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh
Thou hast showed Thy people hard things; Thou hast made us
To drink the wine of astonishment
The language changes dramatically even, from the halcyon
reminiscence of a young person, or so at least it would seem so, to the fire
and brimstone sermon of a deeply religious person. The tones and the approaches
of perspective to the suffering they endure are even different, playing with
the lenses in which people cope with their demise, taking comfort in either
memory or in salvation or in the myriad of fashions that other people within
these pages take to.
Then
there is the reprisal of characters, their thoughts not confined to a single
instance of poetic thought, but rather they have more poems dedicated to the
progressing emotions that press upon them as death nears. Some examples are
much more clear, such as the poems that begin with “Dear Mattie”, but,
nonetheless, even without that introduction, they share similar languages and
themes of travel and the continuity of quotidian life, the insistence of things
that will be done. Then there are others where the language and theme is key to
realizing that a former speaker is present, such as the case with the reverend,
when on page 52 we read:
I cried unto God with my voice….he gave ear unto me.
In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord;
My sore ran in the night, and ceased not;
My soul refused to be comforted.
I remembered God, and was troubled;
I complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed.
I am so troubled I cannot speak.
See, even though there is nothing specified about who is
speaking, no indicator nor reference, one can tell from the language used that
it is very well the same person speaking on pg. 27 with the same pious sermon
dialogue.
Hence,
Voigt is able to project multiple characters through her mastery over detailing
their lives and the throwing of voice in a manner that is difficult to achieve
I completely agree with what you say about the change on voice in the poems. It's fascinating and impressive how Voigt is able to do so and maintain a strict form throughout the collection. However, I would like to reflect more on what you say about the poems sharing the theme of "continuity of quotidian life, the insistence of things that will be done", because I have loved the poems that have begun with "Dear Mattie" immensely and until you said that, I couldn't quite understand exactly what it was that I loved about them.
ReplyDeleteThey say that the best way to cope with tragedy is to just go on with life- and I feel that that is something that is reflected beautifully in the "Dear Mattie" poems. My favorite one is page 32, in which the soldier tells the news of his friend Pug's death. He literally begins the letter with, "Dear Mattie, did you have the garden turned?" and the way he ends it almost feels like, "and oh yeah, by the way, my friend Pug died"-- and that doesn't show any insensitivity on the soldier's part, or him being slowly numbed to loss because he's in war- it shows the human instinct to deal with loss and with death by holding on to life; and life is the sum of the big experiences and the everyday little things, like having the garden turned.
ReplyDeleteYou chose great examples of two of Voigt’s poems that are placed next to each other, yet sound completely different from one another. This was Voigt’s intention—to bring multiple voices into one subject. A couple others noted in their responses that they did not like Voigt’s lack of voice, but I think this is okay, because this poem is not about her. She was not there and she does not want to make this historical event about her or involve herself in it, like Roderick does in “Blue Colonial.” Voigt is trying to accurately represent the lives of people living during this plague. She collects a myriad of experiences and voices that illustrate the same situation.
It’s very interesting that you point out how there are no references to who is speaking, and what about, yet the language itself can indicate that it is a familiar speaker from another poem. This reveals Voigt’s powerful use of voice and our ability to recognize different languages and attach them to a certain person, time, place, or culture.