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In his speech he said, "...The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."

Great question. I see the answer from this perspective (you may get different input)

Emily's house was a standing vestige from the past in a progressing town. Emily herself continued to conduct her life and business the way she would do it back in the day when her family was prosperous, and the Old South was, well, even older.

In some ways, she kept on bringing the past with her, and despite of the fact that the town had changed, she and her will seemed to widthstand the changes of society, time, progress, and history.

You could argue that, though her house stood there and remained there as a stubborn sign of the Old South's past, it is impossible to deny that such Old South has remained in the minds and hearts of poets, writers, and other artists. It has inspired and it has remained the exact way it was in the creative works of many. In many ways, Emily, her house and the Old South are like the voice of the poet, as Faulkner stated.

In light of the fact that William Faulkner once stated that he both loved the South and hated it, his remark as stated above can relate to his love/hate relationship with the Old South as portrayed in his short story "A Rose for Emily."

For, in Faulkner's fiction "the past broods over the present while the present is fleeting, becoming the past." In "A Rose for Emily," the old house of Emily stands on what was once the "most select street...lifting its coquettish decay above the cotton wagons."  In its decaying beauty--like the old confederate soldiers who attend Emily's funeral--it recalls a romantic way of life, a life of values and china plates and beauty and luxurious charm that have not resolved themselves with the present.  In her desperation, Emily wishes to preserve some hold upon her old way of life, but loses this hold. Still, the "poet voice" can give this Old South, beautiful albeit witih tragic flaws, eternal preservation.

To better understand this passage, which is the last line of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, consider it in context:

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail [italics added].

Faulkner was saying that the role of the writer is to remind us of our own humanity and that we will "endure and prevail" so long as we remember and embrace the strength and goodness the human spirit is capable of demonstrating. In reminding us of our humanity, the writer helps us understand each other, as well as ourselves. "A Rose For Emily," for all its dark elements, is a sensitive portrait of one human spirit, Emily Grierson's.

Can we understand Emily? Yes. Strip away the gothic Southern setting and the shocking, twisted conclusion, and what we find is a human heart in torment and a repressed spirit in rebellion. The story, really, is about human need--the compelling need for love and acceptance, a need that was never met in Emily's life as she grew up with a selfish, domineering father. The fact that Emily descends into madness, family genetics aside, emphasizes how deeply felt this need exists in human beings.

Does Faulkner's speech relate to Emily and her story? Yes. Emily wasn't always the crazy old lady with the remains of a corpse hidden in her attic. At one time, she was a young girl whose dreams were destroyed, and then a young woman whose spirit rebelled, drawing her into an unlikely love affair. Understanding Emily helps us understand some part of what it means to be what we are. We can admire her desperate struggle and feel compassion for her destruction, feelings that remind us of our own humanity.