is not silent, it is a speaking-
out loud voice in your head: it is
spoken,
a voice is saying it as you
read.
It's the writer's words,
of course, in a literary sense
his or her "voice" but the
sound
of that voice is the sound of your
voice.
Not the sound your friends know
or the sound of a tape played back
but your voice
caught in the dark cathedral
of your skull, your voice heard
by an internal ear informed by internal
abstracts
and what you know by feeling,
have felt. It is your voice
saying, for example, the word “barn”
that the writer wrote
but the “barn” that you say
is a barn you know or knew. The voice
in your head, speaking as you read,
never says anything neutrally – some
people
hated the barn they knew,
some people love the barn they know
so you hear the word loaded
and a sensory constellation
is lit: horse-gnawed stalls,
hayloft, black heating tape wrapping
a water pipe, a slippery
spilled chirr of oats from a
split sack,
the bony, filthy haunches of cows...
And “barn” is only a noun – no
verb
or subject has entered the sentence
yet!
The voice you hear when you read to
yourself
is the clearest voice: you speak it
speaking to you.
-- Thomas Lux
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