Voice--always there

We were talking in class today about how poems don't describe emotions or have emotion-words in them; but their job is to evoke emotions. Make a person feel a certain way. And thus, Wimsatt and Beardsley use the phrase "emotive import" to describe the transfer from words to emotions. I just...really like the phrase "emotive import."


on voice:
Someone expressed dissent that the voice of the poet, the poet's feelings, should be discounted while reading the poem. This is how I think poems are written, and why I think the background of the author of "We Wear the Mask" shouldn't affect us as readers.

Emotions that are to be evoked, are universal. An author feels something, and then wants an audience to feel the same way. To create that feeling in an audience is difficult because we all have different experiences. There needs to be a universality about the art as well as a specificness about it. And yes, some people might be more closely affected than others because of this, if their backgrounds are more similar to the author's. But by and large, that balance of universality and specificness is crucial to poetry.

To do this is like focusing a microscope on the environment surrounding the feeling. The reader's attention is precious. There is no room for anything beyond the emotive import. Dunbar, as much as his personal background may have made him feel the need to wear a mask (which is complete and utter speculation...he could have just been observing exlovers or family members who hate each other of the same race), did not have time to write about anything except why masks are warn. Here is the poetic microscope; here is the field of vision: masks.

The reader sees this image, subconsciously connects it with his/her own experience, and reacts to the poem. Given that humans have similar motivations and desires, all readers should have similar reactions if the poem successfully accomplishes the author's intent (which of course, the readers have no way of knowing). If the poem is successful, and readers feel the way the author hoped they would, then the audience actually is connecting to a part of the author's experience through similar emotional reactions. In a way, the poet's voice does come through. But it is much more subtle than curious readers want to know. For example, Dunbar could have described masks as ultimately protective and people as invasive. But he doesn't. And neither does the reader thinks so (if the readers reacts the way I do).

Thusly, I do not worry about the poet's voice being lost when we as critics disconnect the poem from the author's life. A poem may stand on its own, but an author has to make it. And a poem will stand according to how it is made.