Category Archives: Poetry

Poetic techniques and notes on specific poets.

Studied poetry: mistakes.

  1. Ignoring the question: if you are asked for a personal response to a poet’s work, every paragraph must contain at least two sentences which include the word “I”. If you are given a statement to discuss, keep using the words from the question (and synonyms) and showing how what you’re discussing is relevant to the question asked. Don’t just rewrite the question at the end of every paragraph and hope this will do – it won’t!

  2. Writing the name of the poem incorrectly (or worse getting the name of the poem wrong!). When you write the name of a poem, use capital letters and quotation marks eg “The War Horse”, “A Constable Calls”

  1. Lack of quotes! The sure sign of a bluffer. Quotes provide proof that you

    (a)know the poems and (b) can back up any statements you make with concrete evidence.

  1. Quotes at the beginning of sentences/paragraphs. Never write down the quote and then comment on it. This suggests you’re just throwing the quote on the page and then making up something to say about it. Bad idea! The rule is statement FOLLOWED by quote. This way you show you are in control of what you want to say.
  1. Telling the STORY of the poem – sum up what the poem is about in ONE or two sentences. Leave it at that. Your job is to analyse the way the ideas are expressed (techniques), the feelings the poem contains & creates in you, the way ideas recur and develop from poem to poem. Comment on the ideas rather than just saying what ideas the poem contains.

  1. Lack of personal response! You need to show that studying this poet has changed your perspective on life, taught you something valuable, opened your eyes to an issue you had previously ignored, provoked an emotional response, connected to something in your own life. Your job is to convince the reader that this poet is worth a closer look. However, don’t ramble off on a tangent about yourself (there was this one time, at band camp… yawn!). Ultimately you are offering a detailed analysis of the poetry, not a diary of your life. A good rule of thumb is to confine personal response to two sentences per paragraph.

  1. Long rambling sentences, paragraphs that sprawl to over a page, pointless repetition. Try to form the sentence in your head before you write it down. DO NOT vomit onto the page. If you can say what you need to say neatly and concisely in 2 sentences instead of 6 – DO. Try to avoid saying the same thing a couple of different ways. Make your point and move on. The examiner is looking for economy of language: each sentence is crammed with information; no idea or quote is ever repeated; essay is carefully structured into neat paragraphs; linking phrases are used to create flow from idea to idea and from paragraph to paragraph.
  1. Poem by poem analysis which doesn’t establish links between them – you are giving an overview of the poet’s work, showing how the poems fit together, analysing common themes or recurring techniques. Do not just write three mini essays on individual poems. Link them! Each paragraph should begin with a topic sentence. This topic sentence can be thematic, stylistic or tonal.

e.g. THEMATIC = “Boland explores historical events from a deeply personal and individual viewpoint”

e.g. STYLISTIC = “Eavan Boland makes wonderful use of contrast in many of her poems, to bring each issue she deals with into sharper focus”

e.g. TONAL = “Boland masterfully evokes the depth of human suffering in her poems”

Studied poetry made easy!

I came up with the idea for these study guides about six months ago and I’ve been working on them ever since. I’ve always had a rule that I don’t give grinds but – particularly since I started this site – I’ve been under some pressure to change my mind! Between corrections for three exam classes and my adorable but demanding 3yr old the only months I’d have the time (or energy) to give grinds is during the summer – when no-one wants them!

So instead I came up with the idea of “teaching” people the poets on the course using mp3’s. Each study guide is about an hour long and is divided into seven tracks. The first is a short biography of the poet, then a discussion of six (or occasionally seven) of the prescribed poems by this poet and each guide is approximately an hour long. We recorded them in a studio so the sound quality is very good and they’re carefully edited to get rid of any ‘ah’ ‘um’ or occasional cursing when I made a mistake! All you need to do is download them, then stick them on your phone or iPod or whatever mp3 player you’re having yourself. And don’t forget your headphones 😉

I think the beauty of them as an idea is that you can listen to them wherever and whenever you like – on a bus, in a car, when you’re out for a walk or a jog. They fall into the new category of “on-demand” media that’s so popular at the moment. You can pause, rewind, repeat if there’s something you don’t understand and listen to them as often as you like. Hopefully, learning the poetry will be a lot easier this way and at €2.49, a hell of a lot cheaper than €30 an hour grinds!

Click here to get to download the audio study guides.

Poetry vs. Song Lyrics

Once upon a time, long long ago, a song and a poem were published side by side on the Junior Cert exam paper, unseen poetry section. Students were asked to discuss the difference between the style of writing in songs and poems. I stumbled across this question in my first year of teaching and thought it was incredibly  unfair to ask something so difficult of 15yr olds. I fancied myself as a singer-songwriter when I was a teenager and as an adult had dabbled in writing poetry but I still had to think long and hard to verbalise the difference between the two. I knew the difference but found it hard to put it into words. In the end I decided the best way to become fully conscious of the differences was to change a poem into a song and then look at how the language changed.

So here’s the poem we chose:

Funeral Blues
W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

—–

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,

Put crépe bows round the white necks of the public
doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

—–

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,

I thought that love would last forever: ‘I was wrong’

—–

The stars are not wanted now, put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

We decided that a song would need simpler imagery, everyday slang /direct speech, repetition of key ideas for the chorus, short snappy phrases to create a regular beat/rhythm, end-rhyme, and a bridge before the second chorus. With the help of a rhyming dictionary we butchered it, removed the essence (and lost the beauty). Here’s what we came up with:

Funeral Blues Song Lyrics

All of this noise keeps dragging me down to a place I cannot go,

All of these noises echo in the emptiness of my soul,

Clocks ticking. Phones ringing. Heart beating but I feel so low,

See his face when I close my eyes but then I realise

He ain’t never comin’ home

CHORUS:

I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong, I was wrong.

I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong, I was wrong.

I put my faith in love but I was so naive

Now he is dead and gone and I can only grieve,

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

—–

Everyone’s life keeps trundling on but I’m here frozen in the street,

You gave me direction, without you I’m lost & lonely & incomplete

The stars burn out. The sun fades out. Oceans weep from my swollen eyes.

Try to find some will to fight on but then I realise

He ain’t ever comin home.

BRIDGE:

And nothing now can ever come to any good.

And nothing now can ever come to any good.

I trusted in forever – I misunderstood

And nothing now can ever come to any good.

CHORUS

I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong, I was wrong.

I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong, I was wrong.

I put my faith in love but I was so naive

Now he is dead and gone and I can only grieve,

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

—–

I think the comparison illustrates the difference well but something (a lot in fact) does get lost in translation. The sheer force of Auden’s pain is brilliantly captured in the final verse where he imagines the entire universe as a empty house to be abandoned and left behind “pour away the oceans and sweep up the woods” now that his lover is gone. I think a better songwriter than me might be able to keep the beauty of that imagery and still create a catchy love song/lament. I also think that the impact of the desolate final line is lost if you keep repeating it over and over. It’s much more effective to just hear it once and let the sadness sink into your bones.

Unseen poetry

Generally speaking you can answer one 20 mark question or two 10 mark questions so we’ll deal with them separately here.

The 20mark question usually goes a little something like this:

  • Write a personal response to this poem, highlighting the impact it makes on you.
  • Describe the impact this poem makes on you as a reader.

As with studied poetry you are expected to include sentences which use the pronoun I.

  1. Talk about how the poems made you feel.
  2. Identify what they taught you, how they made you look at an issue(s) in a new way.
  3. Mention how these themes are relevant to your life.
  4. Discuss what you enjoyed in the poet’s style of writing

Remember though, no matter what the question, you are expected to quickly figure out the message/theme of the poem, identify some techniques, and comment on the feelings created in the poem and in you. DO NOT go off on a long rambling tangent about how this poem reminds you of this thing that happened to you once. Mention the poem’s relevance to your life in passing but stay focused – your job is to discuss and interpret the poem and how the poem affects you emotionally/intellectually not to talk about yourself (you can do this in Paper 1 QB and essay).  

10 mark questions

Questions on the mood/feelings/atmosphere (see poetic techniques & terminology)

  • What is the mood of this poem and how is it conveyed?
  • How does this poem make you feel? Explain by detailed reference to the poem.
  • How well does the poem capture the boy’s sense of excitement and hope?
  • Choose two phrases which best capture the girl’s feelings. Give reasons for your choices.

Questions on the setting (see language of narration / descriptive writing)

  • Do you like the world that the poet describes in this poem? Give reasons for your answer.

Questions on the imagery/ style of writing (see poetic techniques & terminology)

  • Choose one image/line from this poem that appealed to you. Explain your choice.
  • The poem uses beautiful imagery to capture an ugly reality. Discuss.
  • The poem makes effective use of irony – discuss.

Questions on the poet/speaker/characters in the poem

  • What impression do you get of ….. the poet’s father – the father/son relationship? (see list of character traits).
  • What impact does this childhood experience have on the poet/speaker?
  • What kind of life do you think the speaker lives?

Studied poetry – questions

When the new course began in 2001, the type of questions that came up were pretty predictable and mostly revolved around giving a personal response to a poet. Since 2007 (and the public debate around grade inflation/rote learning) the questions have become more specific and ask you to discuss particular aspects of a poet’s work. What this means in effect is that you need to know the poet – it’s not enough to just learn off a personal response essay and write it in the exam. You MUST respond to the question asked and use an appropriate style (are you writing a speech? an article? a letter? a critical analysis?) and tone (who are your audience).

Let’s look at the more predictable Q’s (which were entirely absent from the 2010 and 2011 papers)

  1. Personal response = expected to include sentences which use the pronoun ‘I‘. Talk about how the poems made you feel. Identify what they taught you, how they made you look at an issue(s) in a new way. Discuss what you enjoyed in the poet’s style of writing. Explore how these themes are relevant to your life.
  2. Discuss the feelings the poet creates in you. They have on occasions specified certain feelings. For example, unhappiness in Larkin’s poetry, tension in Walcott’s poetry, sadness in Frost’s poetry, Plath as ‘intense & disturbing’. So make sure you know both what feelings the poet expresses in their work and what feelings the poems create in you.
  3. Relevance for the modern reader. This came up in 2002 as a specific question on Bishop.
  4. Appeal of a poet  – what you like and/or dislike about their poetry. Very similar to personal response.
  5. Introduce a poet to new readers giving an overview of their themes & style and explaining why you think they would enjoy reading these poems. This could be in the style of an article or written as a speech/talk for classmates. More informal style.
  6. Write a letter to the poet. You might want to ask them questions, where their inspiration come from etc…
  7. Choose a small selection for inclusion in an anthology & justify your selection. You would choose maybe 3 poems, one to represent each major theme in their ouvre.

Ultimately, however, no matter what the question you are still expected to demonstrate a detailed knowledge of the poet’s themes & style of writing, supporting this with detailed quotations.

There is one more type of question and this is the one which has dominated since 2010:

       8. A specific statement about the poet which you must discuss.

Since 2007, more and more questions have started to appear which demand that you respond to a specific question, discussing to what extent you agree or disagree with it or asking you to prove the truth of the statement (a lot like what you do for the Hamlet question). In 2007 two of the four questions did this (Frost & Plath) while two were personal response. In 2008, two of the four again made a specific statement you had to discuss (Donne & Mahon) while two were more personal response (Larkin & Rich). In 2009 only one was very specific (Walcott) while the other three just specified that you discuss BOTH themes and style in your answer (they talked about a ‘clear’ style for Keats & Montague and a ‘unique’ style for Bishop). As an aside, they keep mentioning the style of writing because a lot of students focus too much on themes (what the poet says) but forget to comment on techniques (how the poet says it) which is vital in any discussion of poetry – including your unseen section.

In 2010 ALL FOUR QUESTIONS mentioned specific aspects of a poet’s work. For Yeats it was real v’s ideal, for Rich it was themes of power and powerlessness, for Kavanagh it was transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary and for Eliot it was troubled characters in a disturbing world. In 2011 ALL FOUR QUESTIONS mentioned specific aspects of a poet’s work. For Yeats it was challenging style and subject matter, for Dickinson it was original startling and thought-provoking poetry, for Boland it was insights and precise language, for Frost it was deceptively simple style with layers of meaning. If you learn off an essay and stick to it rigidly you will not be answering the question (or not be able to answer the question) and the only way you can get a good grade in poetry is to answer the question. In other words, you need to really understand what the poet is about. I hate when students ask me if it’s true that you don’t need to discuss 6 poems in your essay. The simple answer is yes. But if you only know 3 poems by a poet you might not be able to answer the question that comes up. It all depends what appears on the day.