Point of View

“This Is Just To Say” is written from the first-person perspective. This point of view is established immediately, with the poem’s first word being the first-person pronoun “I” (1). The swift introduction of the first person suggests from the poem’s start that it is a text that routes its plot and emotions through its first-person speaker, whose experience and feelings are centered throughout the poem’s three stanzas. The major work of the reader in engaging with “This Is Just To Say” is breaking down and coming to an understanding of the speaker’s feelings about their actions, the plums, and the addressee, and in establishing these the poem’s first-person point of view is essential.

The perspective is unique in that the first-person speaker expresses their feelings not to or for themself but to another figure, the addressee whose “breakfast” the speaker has...