Who’s Talking?
Behind the Mask of a Personna Poem
[Archived from June 15, 2019]
Poets do talk about themselves a lot. I admit I do. Our childhoods, vacations, and life dilemmas give us a lot of material, but variety is the spice of poetry. It’s fun to imagine other lives, to dress in masquerade and play a role. Then the speaker of the poem becomes a persona.
Writing in a different voice can liberate you. It allows you to say things that might be embarrassing, shameful, or simply inappropriate if you spoke them yourself. In my case, the persona often adds humor. It also lets me live in a different time, be a man, a pencil, a seagull, or the character in a painting. Notice the speaker doesn’t need to be human. If the poet speaks as an animal or inanimate object, the persona poem does double duty as personification (giving the speaker human characteristics and insights).
A persona poem heightens drama, it can be very much like a dramatic monologue without the play surrounding it. Say you pick up the newspaper and see yet another story of a shooting. You could write it the way a reporter does, just laying out the facts, trying to avoid bias. BUT, if you write from the view of the shooter, the corpse, or the victim’s mother or new bride, your reader is not likely to wander away from your page.
A Few Favorite Persona Poems
One of the first persona poems we all learn is the nursery rhyme, “I’m a Little Teapot” (also personification). A few years later, my tastes veered to the darker side. You likely know these next two. In the interest of saving space, I’ll let you look them up on the internet. “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning is deliciously sinister. The envoy from a Count visits a widowed Duke to make arrangements for his next marriage. If I were that envoy, I’d have my horse saddled, ready to escape the Count as quickly as I could get away without having my throat slit.
What about one of the most famous dark poems, “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe? One might argue it is NOT a persona poem because the speaker, lamenting the death of his lost Lenore, is very much like Poe. At the time of publication (January 1845), Poe’s wife Virginia had already suffered through three years of tuberculosis. He knew she’d never recover. Is the speaker Poe himself with typically Poe macabre embellishment? Was it his way of coping with his own heartbreak? Possibly, but one of the first rules in poetry is not to assume the speaker is the poet. Hence, “The Raven” is a persona poem: a different man, but perhaps Poe is the Raven?
Ventriloquist Writer
I write the words, but they come out of someone else’s mouth. Isn’t that a great solution for writer’s block? You don’t have any ideas today? Borrow them from another head! I’ve shared three persona poems in earlier blogs. In I Interview My Pencil (May 9, 2018), I speak as a pencil, and in I Write by Night (February 25, 2019) I speak for an actual 92-year-old Polish woman who wakes up in the morgue, precisely because the newspaper account did not interview her. In A License to Lie (October 29, 1918), I left you guessing as to which of two poems from a child narrator is a persona poem and which is true. Will the real Alarie please stand up? No, it’s 1:00 a.m. as I’m writing this, so I’m going to stay seated and silent. I’ll just say goodnight with another persona poem.
A seagull in Vancouver gawks at the tourist in her hotel room.
A Seagull Vaguely Remembers
I wake. For a second,
I wonder
what I have to do today –
the last vestige of being human melting
away too slowly. I remember a feeling – Monday,
no longer understand what that is. I dive
and leave dread behind. My time comes
in tides of night or day, rest or fly.
I hang upon an updraft, look down
at the people plodding the beach.
I wonder
how I was ever such a one.
© 2015 Alarie Tennille. First published by Silver Birch Press.
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Grateful hearts always make friends.
EnCompass
EnCompass is a mentoring program for the resident moms. Each month a mom shares dinner with her pair of mentors, two women friends who model a healthy, helpful friendship while teaching life skills. We were invited to present our Gratitude Program to their group, and I can’t wait to go back for the other two sessions.
Our audience was so incredibly welcoming and grateful that they made us feel grateful, too. They also shared their catered meal with us, which let us get acquainted with the people at our table.
After Dinner Thanks
Before we began our presentation, the moms were invited to name any Joys or Challenges they’d like to share with the group. You could feel the pride and gratitude
each woman felt for blessings as well as the enthusiasm of everyone around her as we cheered the news. We applauded an important commendation for a training program, a new baby, new job, achievements of children, etc. I was teary eyed before I got up to speak, but glad to know that these women would have no problem pouring their hearts out.
Julie Carmichael, Director of Programs, then introduced Chris as a supporter who often came by with donations. She said his frequent and quick drop offs made her want to ask, “Who was that masked man?” To explain why I was the chief instructor, Chris told the group that, when we got married, friends of his mother began phoning her. “You’ve got to hear this wonderful thank-you note I just got from Alarie!” Truly, I was as surprised as she was that my notes were making that big an impact. Any day we can impress our new mother-in-law is a good day.
My presentation was short, only about 5 minutes, because we wanted everyone to start writing while they had mentors available to help. We learned that the AP staff already encourages a lot of thank-you writing, so everyone was ready to jump in.
My biggest advice for writing thank-you notes was to talk in the same sincere, chatty way they speak. They don’t need to impress anyone with big words. They’re not writing a job application letter. They just need to let their gratitude shine through. They’d already shown they were good at that.
I held up the small booklet on writing thank-you notes that I wrote for Hallmark in the ‘80s. It was sold with their stationery line. One of the mentors said she had a copy! I told the group that my booklet had a sample letter for a man to thank friends for a golf shirt. Because they have more personal reasons to give thanks: for mentoring, counseling, encouragement, help getting a job, groceries, etc., I told them I’d written a new guide “just for you.” I was stunned by the squeals of glee and applause. I felt so grateful to be there that I decided to devote this blog to Amethyst Place as my thank you.
Heart-Warming Words
Along with the mentors, we got to hear some of the letters. Just look at the photos. Would you expect a thank-you writing party to look like so much fun? We were touched to receive two notes ourselves. I could say I’m proud they listened to my direction, but I know Amethyst Place deserves the credit for showing them how to live with gratitude.
Dear Chris and Alarie,
Thank you very much for this Gratitude Presentation.
I appreciate that y’all took your time to come to Amethyst
and show us how to write thank you notes. Please
come back and visit all of us.
Sincerely,
Emily
Dear Chris and Alarie,
I would like to say thank you for
taking the time to come teach me a skill
that will be very useful in my life.
Having the knowledge that you gave us
can be the defining moment in career
opportunities and set me apart from others.
I very much enjoyed meeting you and
appreciate your generosity.
Sincerely,
Amber