The use of the passive voice in contemporary poetry

I never say never use a certain device/technique/grammatical structure in a poem, because I believe we need to have access to all the tools in the box. However, we should also be very aware of the ramifications and consquences of our syntactic choices. One such example is the use of the passive voice, which is the focus for today's post. As a reader and an editor, I encounter many poems where the passive voice is employed without the poet apparently being aware of its potential effects.

On the one hand, the passive voice can generate an ambiguity in terms of who or what might be carrying out the action, at least until the poet resolves this issue by defining it. If the poet selects an impersonal passive voice, they should be aware that they are creating implicit questions and doubts for the reader. If they aren't conscious of this fallout, communcation may begin to fail.

And on the other hand, the cadence of a sentence or line is often interrupted by a passive voice. It's often surrounded by active verbs, and the necessary inversion of its word order inevitably makes the reader pause. This is fine so long as the poet wants to achieve that effect. Otherwise, it can ruin a poem's flow, especially when invoked as the final lines approach.

In summary, the passive voice too often plays an unintended role when contemporary poetry loses its musical drive and/or semantic clarity. However, when deployed on purpose with a specific aim in mind, it's an extremely useful tool. Something, perhaps, for all of us to ponder next time we sit down in front of a blank piece of paper...