Attending closely to how Alexander Pope's versification - how he makes verses - lets us hear the distinctive voices of his poems. Careful listening pays rich rewards. Without it we may have a hard time getting beyond a first impression, like that of Thomas Berger's young protagonist in Little Big Man, Jack Crabb. Having spent his childhood among the Cheyenne Indians, Jack is adopted by a clergyman whose high-minded wife decides to civilize him by reading Pope to or perhaps at him:

This essay attempts to help readers new to Pope hear in his work something more than mechanical monotony and dogmatic pronouncements.

The first step to appreciating Pope's voice is to think of the word as plural: Pope wrote in many voices. He shared with his age a sense of decorum, which does not necessarily mean politeness but rather the idea that different occasions call for different kinds of behavior. Literary decorum means that various styles are appropriate for various kinds of poetry, just as dress differs according to setting: