Your Voice

"...I fit childish insights within rigid limits."

A writer recently showed me one of her short stories. It struck me how utterly impossible it was to read with anything other than her voice playing in my head—as if she were sitting next to me, flesh and bones, recounting the events herself.

Her tone wasn’t particularly conversational. Granted, the story was about a personal subject—but subject matter, in an of itself, would not have been enough to cast the spell of intimacy.

No, what did the magic was how much of herself she poured into the story. The key to good writing is honesty—lies are useful for day-to-day survival, but they look awkward on the page.

I’m obsessed with formally outlandish literature that still manages to sound as if the writer were speaking directly to me, without any pretentions to convince or impress the audience.

Take this univocalic poem by Christian Bök:

From Chapter I

for Dick Higgins

Writing is inhibiting. Sighing, I sit, scribbling in ink
this pidgin script. I sing with nihilistic witticism,
disciplining signs with trifling gimmicks — impish
hijinks which highlight stick sigils. Isn’t it glib?
Isn’t it chic? I fit childish insights within rigid limits,
writing shtick which might instill priggish misgiv-
ings in critics blind with hindsight. I dismiss nit-
picking criticism which flirts with philistinism. I
bitch; I kibitz — griping whilst criticizing dimwits,
sniping whilst indicting nitwits, dismissing simplis-
tic thinking, in which philippic wit is still illicit.

Pilgrims, digging in shifts, dig till midnight in mining
pits, chipping flint with picks, drilling schist with drills,
striking it rich mining zinc. Irish firms, hiring micks
whilst firing Brits, bring in smiths with mining skills:
kilnwrights grilling brick in brickkilns, millwrights
grinding grist in gristmills. Irish tinsmiths, fiddling
with widgits, fix this rig, driving its drills which spin
whirring drillbits. I pitch in, fixing things. I rig this
winch with its wiring; I fit this drill with its piping. I
dig this ditch, filling bins with dirt, piling it high, sift-
ing it, till I find bright prisms twinkling with glitz.

The writing sounds silly at first, but try to forget that you’re reading a poem that only uses the letter i for a moment. Let the words flow to you. Picture what Bök is whispering to you.

There’s a lot going on in the poem: wit, boasting, Anglo-Irish conflict, the toil of creating art, and the merciless bashing of both critics and midwits. And throughout it all, despite the frivolous form, I hear the author speaking to me.