| Comment | "Lyrical I" is a non-starter. "Persona" is properly a specialized term for a profiled role, especially in satire. You'll muddy the waters if you use it indiscriminately. That leaves you with "speaker," which is the normal term.
Of course, poems are written, not necessarily spoken. And they are written by the author. You might just as well say "Shakespeare says" as "Virginia Woolf says." Unless you are discussing a distinction between the stance of the poem and the stance of the poet, it's wasted words to insert "speaker." And if you are distinguishing, then it's really between the poem and the poet; even in this case, "the speaker" is a figment. That leaves you with "persona," for the relatively few cases where it really matters. But if the persona is named, like Prufrock, then use the name.
The bottom line is that if you want to write well, leave the speaker/persona/ego out of it altogether. If you have an obstinate teacher, grit your teeth and use "speaker." |
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