New and Selected Poems | Style

New and Selected Poems Style

Point of View

The majority of the poems in this volume are written from the first person perspective. In select pieces, an omniscient narrator voice is used. When the omniscient narrator voice is employed, the tone is observational. That is to say, the narrator recounts a scene and then addresses the reader with thoughts, opinions or questions related to the subject of the poem. One example of this type of observational narrator is "Rumor of Moose in the Long Twilight of New Hampshire" (pg. 165). In this selection, the narrator acts as a news reporter of sorts, telling the reader about a moose that had been sighted by someone in the author's neighborhood. The reader is coaxed into forming a picture in the mind's eye by the way the poet describes the moose's wanderings. There are other poems which also utilize the omniscient narrator voice which manage to maintain a distance between the...
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