What point of view means in a poem
Point of view in a poem is the position from which the poem is spoken. It answers a few simple questions. Who is speaking? Who, if anyone, is being addressed? How close is the speaker to what is being described?
It helps to separate the speaker from the poet. The voice in a poem may be close to the poet’s own, but it can also be a character, an object or an invented persona. Critics usually refer to “the speaker” for this reason, rather than assuming the poem reports the poet’s own views.
Three categories cover most poems: first person, second person and third person. Many poems blend them, which is covered further down.
First-person poems
First-person poems use I, me, my, we or our. The speaker is inside the experience and tells it from within.
Lyric “I”
Many lyric poems, especially ones about feeling or reflection, use a first-person speaker. Emily Dickinson’s short poem begins:
I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too?
The speaker confides directly in the reader, which also brings in a “you”. Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” opens with a speaker standing at a fork in a path and describing his own choice:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both
Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” is also first person, with a speaker mourning a lost love who recalls that “I was a child and she was a child”.
Dramatic monologue and persona
In a dramatic monologue the speaker is clearly a character, and the poem lets the reader see more than the speaker intends. Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” begins:
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive.
The speaker is a duke talking to a visitor, and his own words slowly reveal how controlling he is. Readers sometimes call a speaker like this unreliable, because the poem invites us to judge him differently than he judges himself.
Poets can also speak as non-human things. Carl Sandburg’s “Grass” gives the voice to grass itself, which tells people to bury the dead of past battlefields and ends with “I am the grass; I cover all.” The speaker is first person but plainly not the poet.
Collective “we”
A first-person plural speaker speaks for a group. Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” begins:
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
The “we” turns a private feeling into something shared by many people, which changes how the reader hears the poem.
Second-person poems
Second-person poems address you. The “you” may be a specific person, the reader, or the speaker talking to himself or herself. This point of view often goes with commands or advice. Rudyard Kipling’s “If—” is a well-known case:
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
Here the reader is drawn into the situation, because “you” also feels like it refers to whoever is reading. Be careful, though: a poem that speaks to a named person (“my love”, “Lucy”) may still have a first-person speaker, since the speaker is saying I to that listener. The category depends on how the poem is mainly spoken.
Third-person poems
Third-person poems describe people and events from outside, with he, she, they or a name. The speaker may be neutral, like a narrator, or may know the characters’ thoughts. Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” is told this way:
Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
The soldiers are described, not speaking for themselves. Wordsworth’s “She dwelt among the untrodden ways” also has a third-person subject, Lucy, although a personal feeling enters near the end. Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” has a first-person speaker, yet Death appears in the third person as the polite figure who “kindly stopped for me”, a famous case of personification.
Third-person speakers are often described as follows, the same terms used for prose in third person limited and omniscient examples:
- Limited, staying close to one character’s experience.
- Omniscient, able to say what several characters think or feel.
- Objective, reporting only what could be seen, with little comment.
W. H. Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen” is often given as an example of a detached third-person voice, since it reads like an official report on a man’s life.
Shifting and unusual points of view
Poems do not always stay in one position. A poem may begin in third person and move to I, or address you in the final stanza. These shifts usually matter: they change how close the reader feels. When you notice a shift, ask what happens just before it and what changes in the tone afterward.
How to find the speaker’s perspective
- Underline the pronouns. I and we point to first person, you to second, he, she and they to third.
- Ask who is being addressed. Is it the reader, a lover, an object, nobody?
- Note how much the speaker knows. Can they see inside other minds, or only describe what is visible?
- Check tone and word choice. Does the speaker sound proud, grieving, ironic, detached?
- Look for gaps. If the speaker says one thing and the details suggest another, the poem may be using an unreliable speaker.
Ten point of view poem examples
| Poem | Poet | Point of view |
|---|---|---|
| “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” | Emily Dickinson | First person |
| “The Road Not Taken” | Robert Frost | First person |
| “Annabel Lee” | Edgar Allan Poe | First person |
| “My Last Duchess” | Robert Browning | First person (dramatic monologue) |
| “Grass” | Carl Sandburg | First person, non-human speaker |
| “We Wear the Mask” | Paul Laurence Dunbar | First-person plural |
| “If—” | Rudyard Kipling | Second person |
| “The Charge of the Light Brigade” | Alfred, Lord Tennyson | Third person |
| “She dwelt among the untrodden ways” | William Wordsworth | Third person |
| “The Unknown Citizen” | W. H. Auden | Third person, detached |
Is point of view a literary device?
Point of view is better described as a basic choice about perspective than as a single device like a simile. It shapes how other techniques work, because the same image reads differently from a grieving I than from a distant narrator. Textbooks and glossaries do often discuss it alongside literary devices, so it is reasonable to treat it as one.
Sources list the “elements of poetry” differently, but the following five are common in classroom lists: speaker (including point of view), imagery, sound (rhyme, rhythm), form and structure, and theme. Our article on examples of rhyming poems covers the sound element in more detail.
Related reading
Point of view often matters most when comparing two poems on the same subject. The comparison poem examples show how to put two speakers side by side. If a poem speaks in the voice of a character from older literature, see intertextuality poem examples.