Persona poetry

"[2] Furthermore, a wide range of characters are created in persona poems from a variety of sources, including, "popular culture, history, the Bible, literature, mythology, newspaper clippings, legends, fairy tales, and comic books.

"[2] Stock characters of pantomime and commedia dell'arte, such as Pierrot, have been revived by twentieth century poets such as T. S. Eliot[3] and Giannina Braschi,[4] and by singer-songwriters such as David Bowie.

[11] While "the dramatic monologue as a poetic form achieved its first era of distinction in the work of Victorian poet Robert Browning", there were precursors in Classical literature, including that of China.

[17] Irving Howe argues that a "confessional poem would seem to be one in which the writer speaks to the reader, telling him, without the mediating presence of imagined event or persona, something about his life".

[citation needed] Often these persona types were quite conventional, such as the lonely wife left behind at home, the junior concubine ignored and sequestered in the imperial harem, or the soldier sent off to fight and die beyond the remote frontier.

Part of the legacy associated with fu poetry (206 BCE – CE 220) is its use as a form of sociopolitical protest, such as the theme of the loyal minister who has been unjustly exiled by the ruler or those in power at the court, rather than receiving the promotion and respect which he truly deserves.

[25] The Heroides are fifteen epistolary poems composed by Ovid (43 BCE – 17/18 CE) in Latin elegiac couplets and presented as though written by a selection of aggrieved heroines of Greek and Roman mythology in address to their heroic lovers who have in some way mistreated, neglected, or abandoned them.

In the third book of his Ars Amatoria, Ovid argues that in writing these fictional epistolary poems in the personae of famous heroines, rather than from a first-person perspective, he created an entirely new literary genre.

[28] "Prufrock" is a dramatic interior monologue of an urban man, stricken with feelings of isolation and an incapability for decisive action that is said "to epitomize frustration and impotence of the modern individual".

[33] Pessoa also created the personae of a philosopher and sociologist António Mora, an essayist Baron of Teive, an astrologer Raphael Baldaya, and many others, for a total of at least 72 heteronyms.

[4] In the second part of Empire of Dreams, entitled "La Comedia Profana", (1985) clowns, buffoons, harlequins, witches, shepherds, and fortune tellers give first-person narratives of their adventures in modern day New York City.

[36] These stock characters take over the city streets, stores, and tourist attractions, such as Macy's, the Empire State Building, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Central Park.

Minal Hajratwala has explained her use of persona as resulting from her different identities, including "Gujarati, queer, diasporan, San Franciscan, poet, performer, writing-coach, editor, recovering journalist, and more.