Talking in a poem

In Diction, Tone, Voice, Oliver talks about these three important aspects of a poem. She talks about how these three things work closely together in creating a good poem. She states that these three things are crucial to modern poems and have allowed poets to deviate from he more structured, formed poems to a more relaxed, easy going and friendly style that allows a poet to better connect with the reader. Diction, tone, and voice allow a poet to essentially be talking to the reader and truly get across the message and meaning of the poem.
Oliver also talks about the idea that a majority of poems focus on a dark or negative aspect of life or whatever the poet may be writing about. Before, I thought this was simply depression (which it often was), but Oliver provides the term “negative capability” for this. Oliver uses Keats ideas of negative capability to describe it as the idea that a poet is able to understand and connect with a certain topic or idea; this then leads to poets acting as the “negative” side of the subject. This then contributes to the often dark or gloomy side of many poems that poets are able to convey with an elaborate combination of diction, tone, and voice.
This chapter really astonished me. I expected a boring talk about something that we talked about like crazy in AP 11 with rhetorical devices. However, Oliver, thankfully, surprised me. She incorporated many things that I had failed to consider when looking at diction, tone, and voice and displayed how crucial these three things are and how they can be used in a poem to make a poem much better. And, to my surprise, she also included a brief section on what should be excluded from a poem. This really helped advance my knowledge of writing poetry by telling me what I should be doing and what I shouldn't. Glad I read this chapter over Imagery.