Speaker vs. Author

A speaker and author are almost never the same. Be careful of that word "almost" I just wrote. Usually the author is not the speaker of his or her poem, so we don't refer to the speaker as the author ever. Err on the side of caution and assume that the speaker is separate from the author. It is important when demonstrating your understanding of the poem.

Why is it that we so often want the author to also be the speaker? Do we want to assume that every speaker of every poem is a poet? Then why would a poet write poems -- shouldn't they just give speeches?