30 Poems in 30 Days: Persona Poems
September 8, 2007 by John Hewitt
This is Day 5 of 30 Poems in 30 Days
A New Perspective
As we continue to explore different approaches to poetry, today we are going to look at the persona poem. Persona poems are poems written from a perspective other than your own. You use your imagination to enter the world of another character. You can write a persona poem from the perspective of a friend, an enemy, a relative, a pet, a celebrity, a historical figure, a character from literature or you can make up a character of your own.
The basis or a persona poem is a change in point-of-view. You aren’t just writing about another character, you are writing as if you were that other character. You try to think like that character. You imagine that character’s thoughts, actions, skills and limitations. You try to capture the world in which that character lives and you portray it as if you were that character.
This is a style of poetry that is heavily influenced by fiction. You leave behind your point of view and take on another. You try to bring a character to life and make that character interesting to your readers. It can be challenging, but also freeing. You are given the chance to change your style, tone and perspective, at least for the length of one poem.
Adding a fictional layer to your poetry allows you to address issues you can’t comfortably express as yourself. Persona poems can be an excellent method for dealing with personal issues that are too close for you to write about from your own perspective. Persona poems also can be a great way to explore your feelings about an social or personal issue by looking at it from the other side. What would the person on the other side of the issue say to you?
Today’s Poetry Assignment
Write a persona poem that incorporates one of the past two concepts. It should either address a social issue or it should provide a strong sense of place. One great way to do the latter is to write a poem in a public place, and to observe the people around you until you find someone interesting that you can imagine a back-story for.
Today’s Recommended Poet
Persona poems are an opportunity to explore new worlds. Fiction writers get to do this all the time. There are some poetry writers who write almost exclusively in other personas. The poet AI (pronounced “I”) is an excellent example of a persona poet. She has written from the perspectives of miners, farmers, abusive husbands, the famous and the infamous. No poet writes more vividly from other people’s perspectives than Ai.
Dread
Vice
Greed
This is a good house
Sometimes I drag my arse
across the hard flat carpet,
digging in as I get up speed.
The tree stump outside the back door
has rough bark that I scratch on
with a long, slow scrape of my claws.
The yard has a patch of concrete
where I take the sun,
and grass and gravel for rolling.
I loll on my back, I bend,
I turn and writhe and slide,
then jack-knife onto my stomach.
At night I curl in the cushions
of one of the empty chairs,
still warm from those big bodies.
Mornings I find my own place
at the end of their bed –
after the greeting and ear scratching.
In winter I stretch right out
alongside a small grey wall
which emanates beautiful heat.
In summer I lie on my back
near the tall white source of breeze
and my legs flop loose in the air.
In the house before this
the back yard belonged to a dog.
The front was hot and narrow.
The woman there shut me outside.
I crouched behind a bush,
cringing from passing cars.
Here they open the doors
when I want to come in and out.
They comb my fur, they talk to me.
This is a good house.
My Entry:
Labor Day Speech to the Janitorial Staff
I want to thank everybody for their hard work
For showing bravery under difficult circumstances
For mopping floors
For sweeping under tables
For bringing order to this troubled region
Every rat
Or bat
Or toad you kill
Makes it safer to walk the corridors
Of this mall
To shop at the kiosks
To eat in the food court
To ask questions at the information desk
When I look out at the clean and shiny tile
I see success
I see that we are making progress
In this war against skate punks and loiterers
In the food court we are seeing first hand
The dramatic differences that can come
When we make this mall more clean and shiny
You see Goth kids bussing their own tables
You see mall walkers stopping for a smoothie
You see children playing safely on the floor
Because of your hard work
Your mopping and your waxing
You are denying skate punks the traction
To do 180s and hop stairs
When shoppers feel secure and clean
They feel free to focus on shopping
Paving the way for the economic progress we need
To attract the new multiplex
And add another parking lot
We aren’t out of the woods
And I know you know that
We’ve got difficult times ahead
Halloween season is here
And Christmas is just after that
To deal with this
I’m going to be implementing a surge
More janitors
Shorter breaks
Some of you are gonna have to work
More hours
More days
Its important to me
So I know its important to you
I want to assure you that this decision about staffing levels
Is a reflection of your success
Not your failures
We can bring peace and order to this mall
Carry on
And don’t forget to scrape up the gum
Rosemary: Love the cat persona, now why didn’t I think of that.
John: Hmmm, charades — we used to play a game, it was called Who Am I, but we got the initials . . . love the parallelisms, especially “surge,” such energy behind that word.
I typed my fifth directly in (new computer haven’t installed word etc. yet) and when I hit send, everything shut down and I lost it — I don’t know if I can recreate it or not, it was one of those passionate moments.
Mi familia
We live in a cardboard hut, once a crate for an Amana ice box
It is framed and sturdy, covered with a plastic tarp and
Will last a while, from hear you cannot see
Cuidad de Mexico, C.D., only sense a certain vibration
On the hillside,
At night you can see our campfires glowing
Orange embers against the mountains silhouette
Mi esposa hikes down every morning with our child
Bound about her waist, navigates the city traffic
The bustling crowds, into the pink zone
Safe for tourists, near the Hotel Montejo
She unbinds the infant and spreads
Her green and rose serape upon the sidewalk
Tourists will stop to talk, examine her souveneirs
Captured by her smile and the nursing child
Broomstraw senioritas, una bandito de Pancho villa
The bullet built slung across the shoulder of his floral tunic
She is an artist and we are starving, soon her breasts will go dry
If she makes enough today, I will go search the land for Coyote,
Give ese toda los pesos from the clay pot hidden in the hut
Ride the milk train across the desert
Nap tiredly to the rocking open rairoad car to
My rhapsody of hopes and dreams, look into the big eyes of children
Going nowhere between villages en la dia
Hold chickens in my lap, wipe soot from my eyes
Watch the donkeys carrying brooms to market through peasant
Villages all the way to Reynosa. En la noche
I will walk through the aging white pillars
At Papagallos in boy’s town, la casa de punta,
The wild one, he is waiting for me, with promises of la vida neuva en Estados Unido
My government does not stop me, the czars have no patience
For hungry people, their greed lined pockets push me away
I turn to the hearest sympathetic helping hand,
I will be welcome in another land
Mi hermanas are waiting, they have taken a stand
No shots are fired as we conquer a new land
Connie: Thank you. I must admit I’m not particularly pleased with the poem. I have grown set in my ways, and I have so much to say that using someone else’s voice in poetry just isn’t that comfortable for me anymore. i sued to love it, but all things pass. Your poem has some great detail. The only part that pulled me out was “peasant villages”, which seems more like the term of an outsider than an insider.
Rosemary: I am very jealous of the cat. Nice job.
Hmmm, well, I don’t like to use someone else’s voice either, and like you, it used to be fun. That being the assignment creates a conflict in my muse. Truly a peasant living on a hillside would not have the vocabulary or syntax to create this poem. It seems almost ludicrous now. I will of course re-work the poem, I think maybe “our villages,” might work, but oops, redundant, I’ve already used villages once. And, oh boy, I suppose one might say that I was looking out of his eyes with my voice.
Well, John and Connie, it’s very interesting - I believed both pieces while reading them, and could see in my mind the person each of you was writing as, yet both poems are also characteristic of their writers. The persona voice works, and still your own voice is there behind it, unmistakably.
[...] fifth assignment from 30 Poems in 30 Days . Persona [...]
Barcelona
Eulalia held my hands,
held my head
to her breast,
said,
Don’t go out there.
I looked for Alfredo
amongst the debris
of our hope,
each
body was his.
There was little milk,
the mothers went hungry
for two years
while
Franco came.
I was a restless girl,
then a revolutionary,
I grew old
when
Spain arrived.
Cerebralmum: well done ! ! !
Yes, cerebralmum, I love this one. It conveys absolutely everything in these few, impressionistic details.
CM: That was great! I think I wanted more though. It seemed like there is an even deeper story there,
CM: Following John’s remark, I am getting the idea of a verse novel - or novella at least.
There is more there! I was at a loss for a persona to choose so I took one from a short story I wrote years and years ago for university. I think you guys are right - the impressions are good, but not enough to tell the whole story.
I don’t know, I don’t know that anything else needs to be said. We who are students of history know what happened when Spain arrived — the way she says it echoes the ambiance of that era. At our writing group in Abilene (The almost every Wednesday Club), we used to play around with first lines for novels. “I grew old when Spain arrived” COULD be one of those, however it carries a finality with it when expressed in verse.
Then again, I know a lady in Austin, Kay, from Germany, who was ten-years-old during the holecast IN Germany. She was not a Jew, but suffered in the way that neutral Germans who were not aligned with Hitler did, she has told her story in a book of poems. It’s quiet wonderful.
Connie,
Do you think that you could tell me what book that is, I would love to read it!!
In My Room
Your essance lingers
my body tingles
the soft cushion in which I sit
has turned into a heat pad
these four walls fuffocate me
myself and I
it’s hard to breath
your skin so sweet
the air is stiff
though sweet with lavender
your picture in front of me
your here, but not
I see you but I can’t feel you
only in my mind
and in my heart
yet ful of sorrow
[...] 30 Poems in 30 Days: Persona Poems [...]
Rianon: I’m not sure I feel the persona. The voice seems very similar to your own.
[...] 30 Poems in 30 Days: Persona Poems [...]
Last Breath
The stranger in a light blue smock
Leans over me,
Her breath warm,
Mine sparse and cold.
Water seeps into my lungs,
I am suffocating
Until she pushes the plunger
Into the plastic tubing.
Tinny voices whisper around me,
Soft whimpers form vapors
That consume me
And won’t let me go.
Familiar hands touch
My disintegrating flesh
Offering love
While withholding release.
The stranger bids them kiss me
One last time
And with my daughter’s last tear
On my cheek, I exhale.
cerebralmum: I love that last line. This poem takes us to a placwe in history that is often overlooked.
Nice work.
From the Chariot
You think I need to rise
from this wheelchair
and bear weight,
learn to walk again
like I plan to live forever;
but you don’t know
what it’s like to get old–
my God, to punish someone
just take away their eyesight,
someone who used to read
all day long, like I did–
you don’t know, Shmuel,
you don’t know.