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With narrative poems and dramatic monologues, we are usually in no danger of mistaking the speaker for the poet. Lyrics may present more of a challenge. When there is a pointed discrepancy between the speaker of a lyric and what we know of the poet—when the speaker is a woman, for example, and the poet is a man—we know we have a fictional speaker to contend with and that the point (or at least one point) of the poem is to observe the characterization carefully. Sometimes even in lyrics poets “borrow”a character from history and ask readers to factor in historical facts and contexts...To fully understand these thoughts and meditations, then, we need to know something of the history behind them. Yet even without such knowledge, we can appreciate the poem’ powerful evocation of the speaker’ situation and feelings(432/739).
 
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