Persona+and+Tone+in+Poetry

=Persona and Tone in Poetry=

Tone is crucial to the interpretation of poetry. Persona is closely related to tone. In order to identify persona and tone, you need to ask yourself questions about the poem.

Who is Speaking?
A good question to begin with is this: Who is the speaker in this poem? Often the most obvious answer seems to be "the poet", especialy if the poem is written in the first person. When Emily Dickinson begins,

This is my letter to the world That never wrote me -

we can be fairly sure that she is writing in her own voice - that the poem itself is "her letter to the world." But poets often adopt a //persona//, that is, they speak through the voice of a character they have created. Stevie Smith, herself a middle-aged woman, adopts a persona of a different age and of the opposite sex in these lines:

An old man of seventy-three I lay with my young bride in my arms...

Thomas Hardy in "The Ruined Maid" composes a dramatic monologue with a dual persona (or two personae), two young women who converse throughout the poem. The speaker in Auden's "Unknown Citizen" is apparently a spokesperson for the bureaucracy - but most certainly is not Auden himself. Thus, in order to be strictly accurate, you should avoid "The poet says..." when you are writing about persona and tone, and use instead, "The speaker in the poem say..." or "The persona in the poem says."

What is Tone?
After deciding who the speaker is, your next question might be, "What is the tone of this poetic voice?" Tone in poetry is essentially the same as in fiction: the attitude of the writer toward the subject matter of the poem. And tone in a piece of writing is always similar to tone of voice in speaking. If a friend finds you on the verge of tears and comments, "You certainly look cheerful today," the tone of voice - as well as the absurdity of the statement - lets you know that your friend is being ironic - that she meands the opposite of what she says. When Stephen crane begins a poem,

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind,

any alert person perceives is ironic tone at once from the work //kind//, which war definitely is not. But irony can be muc more subtle. Sometimes you need to put together a number of verbal clues in order to be sure of the irony. One of your chief problems in identifying tone involves finding exactly the right word or words to describe it. Even after you have detected that a work is ironic, you sometimes need to decide whether the irony is gentle or bitter, whether it is light or scathing in tone. You need a number of adjectives in your command. As you analyze tone in the poems that you read, keep these terms in mind to see whether any may prove useful: humorous, joyous, playful, light, hopeful, brisk, lyrical, admiring, celebratory, laudatory, expectant, wistful, sad, mournful, dreary, tragic, elegiac, solemn, somber, poignant, earnest, disillusioned, straightforward, curt, hostile, sarcastic, cynical, ambivalent.

//Source: Literature and the Writing Process: Second Edition//