Mood:
lyricalTopic: Eng 126
I?m thinking of taking a vacation this coming summer. It?s going to be the best vacation ever. I will fly on a plane. I will ride animals. I will sweat a lot but stay perfectly comfy
in the water. I will get lots of exercise and fall asleep instantly with exhaustion and a happy smile on my face.
You may never know exactly what this perfect 10 vacation is but you, as the reader, may have had many images come to mind as you read the above. Notice the lack of details, but . . . perhaps, your inner voice and imagination created the details. Maybe you lexia-d in your own amazing mind and pulled in images and ideas of where YOUR perfect vacation is and what you would do simultaneously while trying to figure out what mine is. All in a 9 second read.
The distinction between the voice of the writer and reader can be quite immense. The writer supplies the verbs and nouns and the reader supplies the rounding out of the full contents of each noun and verb context. The writer can manipulate this difference and use it as a writing tool. There can be a delicate balance: too little information and the reader is uninterested and stops reading; too much information and the reader is bogged down in minute detail that can stop her own creative reading voice.
In Thomas Lux?s poem ?the Voice You Hear When You Read Silently,? (p. 658) he delightfully expresses this difference by his use of the word barn and says ? . . . 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. . .?