Voice

The term "voice" refers to the agent, or narrator, who is speaking through the poem. Throughout the The Angel of History, Forché uses multiple voices to illustrate the violence and tragedy of the twentieth century. Instead of using one speaker who witnesses a particular atrocity and attempts to convey that experience to readers, Forché employs a number of speakers who interrupt and, at times, babble incoherently. Her structure of polyglot and fragmented speech, quotations from other writers, and description creates a collage-like effect. By using two speakers in "The Garden Shukkei-en," a narrator who reports her experience walking through a garden with a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing and the survivor herself, Forché gives context and shape to the memories of the survivor, who has the last words in the poem. Other wellknown, twentieth-century poems that employ a similar structure include T. S. Eliot's "The...