In the Manner of Speaking

An observation regarding my little volume of poems by two former students—one late 20s, one early 30s by my counting—has come to me by way of Facebook messaging: “This doesn’t sound like you”. Now that made me laugh. No, no, I reckon it doesn’t.

Since they didn’t elaborate, didn’t specify tone or subject matter, I’ll go with tone. I chuckled a bit thinking of what they knew as my tone of voice during their time in my classroom. My clear-the-halls voice, my call-to-attention in the room, one-on-one discussions about their writing, informative chatter regarding school news or regulations, oh, and those random meetings out in the world—yes, teachers buy fresh produce. “Mr. Kaple bought a bag of garlic!” Why, yes, yes I did.

Of course—and this point is obvious—I am referring to a spoken voice in the previous examples, and so too shifting tones by way of pitch and volume, etc. I am conflating voice with tone to suggest what they heard in my poems is indeed a voice not quite the same as what they heard during our time together.

Besides, I’m not sure what would be the poetic version of my bellowing at tardy students my favorite borrowed phrase, “Run like a freshman”.

I know their reading is plenty nuanced enough to hear a difference in tone between my poems “The Gnat” and “Emmanuel”. So let them consider hearing me read poems out loud, say Molly Holden’s “Some Men Create” and Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young”. Neither readings were in my voice, and if I got after it for the better those days, the voices were decidedly different from one another.

But I do own that I am the voice behind my written words, each and every one, from the serious to the absurd. Perhaps, then, the word voicings clarifies.

Now I wonder about friends from long ago, or the current crop—scratching their heads?  “I don’t know, could be him, I guess.” And then I think of particular high school friends from way, way, way back in the day were they to sit in the back of my classroom when I was holding forth as Mr. Kaple—gales of laughter, no doubt, and down, down, down my ship would sink.