The Speaker

In general, the poet should not be conflated with a poem's speaker, though the speaker can express a particular mood, perspective, or experience belonging to the poet. Even though "From the Desire Field" was written as a personal poem-letter to her friend Ada Limón, the speaker also exists as her own entity. She renames experiences like anxiety and insomnia in order to think of them like a garden of desire, casting everything green. Despite comparing her insomnia to spring abundance, the speaker ultimately shares that she feels unwell and seeks comfort.

The Addressee

The speaker addresses someone with the second-person pronoun "you." When read in the context of Diaz and Limón's correspondence, the "you" in the poem refers to Limón. Using the second-person point of view also creates a sense of immediacy because the poet invokes the reader's presence.

In "From the Desire Field...