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Questions about the speaker in a poem (Who? questions) lead to questions about What? and Why? as well as Where? and When?
First you identify the imagined situation in the poem: To whom is the speaker speaking? Is there an auditor in the poem? Is anyone else present or referred to in the poem? What is happening? Why is this event or communication occurring, and why is it significant?
As soon as you zoom in on answers to such questions about persons and actions, you also encounter questions about place and time. (Where and when does the action or communication take place?) In other words, situation entails setting.
The place involved in a poem is its spatial setting, and the time is its temporal setting. The temporal setting may be a specific date or an era, a season of the year or a time of day. Temporal or spatial setting often influences our expectations, although a poet may surprise us by making something very different from what we had thought was familiar. We tend, for example, to think of spring as a time of discovery and growth, and poems set in spring are likely to make use of that association. Similarly, morning usually suggests discovery— beginnings, vitality, the world fresh and new.
Not all poems have an identifiable situation or setting, just as not all poems have a speaker who is easily distinguishable from the author. Poems that simply present a series of thoughts and feelings directly, in a reflective way, may not present anything resembling a scene with action, dialogue, or description. But many poems depend crucially on a sense of place, a sense of time, and scenes that resemble those in plays or films. And questions about these matters will often lead you to define not only the “facts” but also the feelings central to the design a poem has on its readers.
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