Point of View

This poem uses a very unusual first-person point of view. First-person point of view uses the pronouns “I/me/myself” to establish that the speaker is also a character in the poem, and to directly address the audience. It is the most common perspective used in poetry, and it generally creates a sense of closeness between the speaker and the action of the poem, establishing an emotional connection.

This poem is undeniably in first person. Indeed, the first word of the poem is “I” (1). Readers are thus immediately told that there is a speaker who is narrating the poem for us. And yet, after that initial introduction, the speaker never reappears – not as an aside, not to remind readers this is a dream, not even to transition the narrative from one sentence to the next. The poem becomes entirely narrative. Perhaps most surprisingly, the speaker...