Rick Barot: The Voice in Question (January 2012)

Rick Barot asks how does a writer craft a voice able to compel a reader’s belief and also to surprise her? Looking at work as diverse as Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” Thomas McGuane’s “War and Peace,” and Adrienne Rich’s “The Trees,” Barot argues that the ways in which tone plays out in syntax, diction, as well as in poetry’s formal elements are crucial to creating a truly individualized voice rather than one of mere caricature.