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Poetry: Understanding the Role of

the Speaker

"The Blizzard Moans My Name" by Joan Crate

Dramatic Monologue/ Persona Poems

Persona:

A character created by the poet to narrate the poem. By creating a persona, the poet imagines what it is like to enter someone else's personality. It is a character taken by a poet to speak in a first person poem.

Dramatic monologue/Persona Poem:

A poem in which the poet uses a persona to tell the entire poem. These tend to sound like one-sided conversations, like the character is talking to him/herself. This type of poem can be composed with or without fixed rhyme or rhythm patters.

Example: "A Cry from an Indian Wife" by E. Pauline Johnson

Playing with the Speaker

Crate's poem published in 1990 uses the persona of Shawnandithit in the last years of her life.

One should not assume that the poet is the speaker because the poet may be writing from a perspective entirely different from his/her own.

The speaker can differ from the poet in regards to:

  • Gender - "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes
  • Age - "The Chimney Sweeper" by William Blake
  • Species - "Pig Song" by Margret Atwood
  • Form - "Mirror" by Sylvia Plath

I am the Indian (1978)

I am the Indian

And the burden

Lies yet with me

Rita Joe

Speaker vs. Poet

The "I" here is NOT Rita Joe. The "I" is the speaker. We cannot assume that the speaker is female simply because Rita Joe is female. The speaker in this case does not have a gender.

In an analytical essay you would write:

The speaker states, "[...] the burden\Lies yet with me" (2-3).

Poet= the one who writes the poem

Speaker= the one who tells/says the poem

The speaker is the narrative voice of the poem.

The poet often invents the speaker of the poem in order to give him/herself more freedom to compose the poem.

The speaker is NOT necessarily the poet.

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