Understanding the narrator’s identity helps reveal the narrative voice in poetry. Look for clues in the poem that tell you who or what is speaking. The narrative persona -- the speaking voice that the poet uses for a certain poem -- sometimes aligns well with the historical poet’s own voice. For example, William Wordsworth’s “The Prelude” purports to be “an autobiographical poem,” so you can think of the “I” in the poem as Wordsworth representing his earlier self. In contrast, poets can adopt a persona entirely different from their historical self.
In some poems, the narrative voice addresses another entity, such as a person who’s present, a person who’s absent, or an object, idea, or phenomenon. Look for places where the narrator speaks directly to another, as in Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue “My Last Duchess." Browning writes: “The Count your master's known munificence/ Is ample warrant that no just pretense/ Of mine for dowry will be disallowed.” Textual clues like this one tell readers that the speaker is a duke negotiating marriage to a count’s daughter with a messenger. Establishing the addressee gives you another way to consider the narrative voice’s values and goals.
Sometimes you can’t assign specific identities to the narrator or the addressee, but the poem’s tone is another way to understand narrative voice. Tone involves the speaker’s attitude toward the poem’s material. M. H. Abrams' “A Glossary of Literary Terms” claims that tone can be “critical or approving, formal or intimate, outspoken or reticent, solemn or playful, arrogant or prayerful, angry or loving, serious or ironic, condescending or obsequious, and so on through numberless possible nuances of relationship and attitude.” For example, in William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” the poem’s subject is humanity’s departure from traditional values. The tone becomes more and more ominous as the speaker laments increasing “anarchy” and concludes with an ironic question: “What rough beast, its hour come round at last,/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Look at the poet’s specific word choices, sentence structures, and punctuation to understand the narrator’s tone.
Another consideration relating to tone is the narrator’s attitude toward the poem’s audience or reader. Thinking about what the narrative voice expects you to know already and what it feels necessary to explain can help you understand the author's perspective. T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land,” for instance, inserts snatches of other poetry, songs and drama that limit its implied audience to people with specific background knowledge. Look for assumptions, allusions, foreign words, and unique idioms to help you understand the narrator’s tone toward the audience.