Making Conversation: Inviting New Voices Into a Poem

The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes.”

So begins Frank O’Hara’s “A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island,” a poem that weaves narration with a conversation between O’Hara and the Sun. O’Hara uses dialogue to create character, humor, tension, and meaning. How might we invite other voices into our poems as a way to open new opportunities? In this generative workshop, we'll read and discuss poems that make use of quotations and dialogue as counterpoints to the voice of the speaker, exploring what extra voices make possible. We'll also use these models as springboards for our own multi-voiced poems.