Plato worried that the voice of the poet is not easily nailed down. Two recent books by local poets — each a former Rhode Island Poet Laureate — illustrate the validity of Plato’s concern.

Tom Chandler’s Toy Firing Squad (Wind Publications, 73 pages, $15) is full of untamable voices. “North Providence” begins, “The kid who quit school understands the ass side / of the city. . . .” “Mrs Impossible” begins, “She said she was washing her wings / in the dirt. . . .” “The Birder” “hears the small flocks / on the guano-spattered rocks inside his head. . . .” “Song & Dance Man” would “belt out one to make you / see how raggedy and right he loved / his smiley bad self.”

The “Song & Dance Man” persona — “his smiley bad self” — is essential Chandler. Yet in one of the best poems, “Tao of the Yo,” Chandler writes that he’s learned how to do many ingratiating tricks in his life, but he still can’t get the hang of the yo-yo, the “simple flick of the proper wrist” that allows you to “walk the whole damn dog around the world.” It is a charming admission for one who works very hard at his poetic persona.

The poems in C. D. Wright’s Rising, Falling, Hovering (Copper Canyon, 97 pages, $22) look very different from Chandler’s. Where his sit in the middle of the page — narrow blocks of type, usually beginning and ending on the same page — Wright’s just keep going, changing shape as they do. So with the voice: contained by and transcending the lines, the voice is both hers and not-hers, not anybody’s, and yet resonant and deeply pleasurable.

Wright has been criticized for being ornery and selfish as a poet, but that seriously misjudges what is at stake. Whereas Chandler seems desperate to make the universe echo with his voice, Wright knows how to yo-yo.

Wright’s polyphony opens cracks in the universe (“What I want is a closed-captioned-surround-sound-UV-protected Armageddon/ Rage could be my issue”), but if I had to name the voice that keeps coming through, I’d say, “Joan Didion.” I’m sure “Joan Didion” is just my way of naming one thing I love about this book. The strict conscience, the political consciousness, the tough-talking idiomatic intimate drone, the irrepressible fun (“Every regret its own cow to pick clean”) — all just this side of losing it and for cause. For cause.

“Like I said to the doorman the other night / Some moon, huh / You should have seen it before the war Miss / We must not get used to this.”

tdevelyn@earthlink.net