Talk:Persona poetry

Clarification

This article is not sufficiently clear as to the differences between the persona poem, the dramatic monologue, the interior monologue, or, say, meditative poetry. How is the term persona useful as a critical term?

Also the following doesn't make sense: "Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey, has been accepted by academics as the first known persona poem in the Western literary canon. Multiple personae narrate the poem, including Odysseus, Telemachus, and Penelope". No, Odysseus, Telemachus, and Penelope are not personae but characters in an epic, and The Odyssey is not narrated by multiple narrators.

To take another example, why isn't Margaret Atwood's 1974 "Siren Song" which is "narrated from the voice of a mythical siren" not a dramatic monologue? How does using the word persona help us better understand Atwood's poem? Rwood128 (talk) 16:18, 17 February 2020 (UTC) The fact that it is spoken by a mythical creatures doesn't make it a persona poem surely? Rwood128 (talk) 17:27, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

The following section suggests, both in choice of poem, and in the comment, that persona poem is a synonym for dramatic monologue: "Robert Browning's 1842 'My Last Duchess' has been posited as meeting 'the golden standard' of the persona poem, as it typifies the formalistic qualities of the persona poem: dramatic tension, manipulating the reader experience, and removing the distance between speaker and reader." Rwood128 (talk) 17:05, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Looking more closely, I see that what Rebecca Hazelton actually says is:

A persona poem allows a great deal of control over the distance between a speaker and the audience. Tate’s speaker chats directly to us, but not all persona poems encourage this one-on-one intimacy. Others invite us to sit back, observe from a distance, and even judge. The gold standard for this is Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue “My Last Duchess” (my emphasis).

So it does seems that a dramatic monologue is a form of persona poem. Another article that is cited might lead to the conclusion that an elegy is another kind of persona poem. But where is there solid, mainstream discussion of the term persona poetry? Rwood128 (talk) 21:52, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

With due respect Mk you published this article too soon, without a clear understanding of the topic – that is if persona poetry is even a real topic, because the article and the sources cited make me wonder. Rwood128 (talk) 21:52, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

The following provides a useful discussion of the topic: Academy of American Poets Rwood128 (talk) 11:56, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Persona

"Celebrity figures such as Snoop Dogg have constructed alter-egos through which to write and perform songs, and through this Snoop Dogg is able to portray “the persona of a cool, yet violent man” to deliver 'theatrically exaggerated threats.' " Yes, he acts a part, plays a role, presents his material from a certain point of view, but why is what he creates persona poetry? The article quoted isn't about persona poetry. How is Snoop Dog different from Wordsworth, Ginsberg, Dylan Thomas? Is the logic A is a poet; A creates a persona (assumes a certain theatrical role): so A is a persona poet? Rwood128 (talk) 20:24, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

New edits

Thanks Mk1183 for your recent edits. It's always more interesting to work with someone else – and I was feeling bad about all my deletions and criticism of what you had created. In fact, initially, I wondered even if there as such a thing as persona poetry! What you have added looks – both interesting and useful – but I need to read it more carefully. I'm looking forward to exploring this interesting topic further.

I was tempted to add the interesting section on literature from the Persona article, but unfortunately it has no citations. Rwood128 (talk) 14:57, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

I noticed, Mk1183, that you restored some edits that I deleted yesterday. Initially I was irritated, but then I realized that because I had made some many edits that you probably hadn't seen all my explanations. Generally I deleted things that the source cited didn't support. The sources cited for the section on criticism, for example, didn't mention persona poems.

I suggest that The Canterbury Tales be removed. My reasons are first, that these are stories, and, second, that they are told by characters rather than personae. There are problems bringing narrative fiction, such as narrative poems, verse novels, and epics into the discussion, without also talking about their prose counterparts, amongst other things. A discussion of narrative poetry, and also verse drama, should probably be left for an article on Personae in literature. What do you think? Rwood128 (talk) 20:56, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi Rwood, thank you very much for all your edits and assistance with this article! Your critiques and edits have been highly useful and constructive, and substantially improved this page and challenged me to improve it further too. I think I will re-add the 'Critical Reception' when I find sources that are directly relevant and be extremely careful to ensure that they are. I hadn't seen this talk page until today, but will now carefully note your criticisms and take them into consideration. Thank you once again! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mk1183 (talk • contribs) 09:45, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi Mk1183, I did wonder if you were aware of this page. Rwood128 (talk) 17:51, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

The Canterbury Tales

Re Chaucer the following paragraph from the Novel is relevant (though The Canterbury Tales does not fit the definition of an epic). See also The Decameron – by the way there are presumably persona poems in other languages than English. Boccacio's collection of novellas in prose is usually seen as an important influence on Chaucer.

While prose rather than verse became the standard of the modern novel, the ancestors of the modern European novel include verse epics in the Romance language of southern France, especially those by Chrétien de Troyes (late 12th century), and in Middle English (Geoffrey Chaucer's (c. 1343 – 1400) The Canterbury Tales). Even in the 19th century, fictional narratives in verse, such as Lord Byron's Don Juan (1824), Alexander Pushkin's Yevgeniy Onegin (1833), and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh (1856), competed with prose novels. Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate (1986), composed of 590 Onegin stanzas, is a more recent example of the verse novel.

Rwood128 (talk) 11:43, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Emily Dickinson

In the discussion of Emily Dickson's poem "Wild nights!" there is this statement: "Both the speaker and the object of the longing are without gender".

To play the devil's advocate. This poem was obviously written by a woman and it is a typical love lyric. The object of the love could be Christ (or God), or a person. Given that there is evidence that Dickinson was possibly in love with her sister-in-law, that might make it a lesbian love poem. Where is the persona that some critics claim to find? I presume that this poem, like most of Dickinson's poetry was never published, but anyhow it is not obviously a lesbian poem, so there was no reason to hide behind any persona.

I seem to remember reading this as a religious poem, because this had been my initial impression of Emily Dickinson's oeuvre; there is of course a long tradition of erotic imagery in religious poetry that is rooted in the Song of Solomon.

I'd be most interested to know how Dickinson does the following: "Pagnattaro also claims that Dickinson created an “androgynous” persona to achieve a “spiritual or psychological state of wholeness and balance arrived at through the joining of masculine and feminine”? She certainly doesn't do it in "Wild nights!". Rwood128 (talk) 19:42, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

A further comment: If her poems weren't published and "taboo themes" not stated how could she have "explored" them? Other than as a private exercise that is. Rwood128 (talk) 19:54, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

I've now read Marisa Pagnattaro but I'm not convinced that the persona in Emily Dickinson's poems is anyone but Emily. Furthermore, the possibility that most of these love poems are in fact religious poems needs to be considered, as I've suggested above. Rwood128 (talk) 11:54, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

African-American poetry

Isn't the section on race and persona about the type of persona poem called a dramatic monologue? I still need to be educated in the difference between different kinds of persona poetry, especially how to differentiate between a persona poem and a dramatic monologue. If there is no real difference we should move to merging the duplicate articles. Rwood128 (talk) 20:26, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Confessional poetry

Mk1183 I'm still struggling in attempting to understand this topic. What is the relationship of persona poetry to confessional poetry? The paragraph that I've just added would suggest that there might be some connections, despite the use of a persona. Other sources quoted here apparently indicate that the term is synonymous with the dramatic monologue. Is "persona poetry" more than a trendy term? – i.e. dramatic monologue sounds too Victorian.Rwood128 (talk) 10:59, 26 February 2020 (UTC)