What is the difference between the speaker of the poem and the poet?

September 14, 2016
What is the difference between the speaker of the poem and the poet, and why is it important to understand this distinction?
    Something that many people can get mixed up in poetry is the speaker of the poem and the poet, yet they are two very different things. People usually think about the poet when they think of who is speaking the poem, where in some cases they could be right, but not all the time. Part of poetry is the way that the poem is being conveyed, reading between the lines. Many times, poets could be writing a poem from a person’s perspective that is not their own. Even though the poet will always know the true real meaning of the poem, usually there are ways the poem is written to be able to find out what kind of person the speaker is, although sometimes much more vague than others. This is a very important thing to understand in poetry because in certain situations, if you’re reading a poem assuming it’s being spoken by the poet, you could completely miss the true meaning of the poem. Poetry is all about emotion and if you read a poem assuming or not knowing who the speaker is, you won’t be able to feel the intended emotion being conveyed by the poet.