Helen Vendler's advice on reading lyric poetry

"The true 'actors' in lyric are words, not 'dramatic persons'; and the drama of any lyric is constituted by the successive entrances of new sets of words, or new stylistic arrangements (grammatic, syntactical, phonetic) which are visibly in conflict with previous arrangements used with reference to the 'same' situation....Thus, the introduction of a new linguistic strategy is, in a sonnet, as interruptive and interesting as the entrance of a new character in a lyric."

From The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets, 3.