American Literature / Unit 1 AML 0002 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Speaker and Poet: The Difference That Decides Answers
Captions available
The idea
A poem is spoken by a voice the poet makes, and that voice is the speaker. The speaker may be a child, a corpse, a townsman, a madman. Questions ask what the speaker feels or knows, never what the poet felt, and answers reaching for biography go wrong.
In practice
The voice, not the hand behind it.
Where people slip
Biography is the commonest wrong turn.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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