At the risk of showing my ignorance, let me ask a basic question or two. What is the difference between a "dramatic monologue" and any poem in which the speaker is not necessarily the poet? Can a reader always know that he is reading a dramatic monologue rather than a poem that is true to the poet's life and experience? We've all read poems which seemed to be personal utterances of the poet, but it turned out that the details and the situations were made up. Are these poems dramatic monologues, or is the term reserved for a narrower class of poem?
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