Attitude
This refers to the persona’s feelings towards his subject matter, i.e. how they regard or feel about the subject matter. It also refers to the feelings of somebody else that the poet is writing about. Attitudes shown are not necessarily those of the poet. A persona’s attitude is revealed by his tone. The language and especially the stylistic devices that the poet employs reveal his attitude. For instance, if he compared someone to a ‘hungry hyena’, the image would show his contempt towards that person. His attitude is therefore contemptuous. We use terms such as dissolve, hate, disgust, pity, loving, disillusionment, liking, empathy, etc to describe attitude. c.f ‘Appreciating poetry’-