Literary works constitute a special domain of language life. They record the temporal changes of language life and participate in the construction of sociolinguistic life through emotional and aesthetic expressions. For over a century, Chinese poetry themed on workers has advanced side by side with the times, serving as a spiritual epic of the working class. From the perspectives of language and identity, the narrative persons and personal pronouns in modern worker-themed poetry have undergone a historical shift from the third-person pronoun “he” to the first-person pronoun “we”. Among the four major genres of contemporary workers’ poetry emerging since the reform and opening-up, a prevalent transition from “we” to “I” has emerged. Differences in narrative persons stem from variations in subjective identity, and they also determine how narrators choose their words, organize sentences into coherent texts, and thereby depict a picture of language life imbued with temporal traits and group characteristics. Approaching the subject from this angle enables an in-depth exploration of the spiritual world and emotional structure of the creators of contemporary workers’ poetry. The “I” that has broken away from the collective “we” is regaining strength, piecing together fragmented spirits, and embarking on the reconfirmation and development of a new subjectivity.