Post by TomBeasley on May 24, 2009 18:29:59 GMT -5
Introduction
If you are doing English Language or English Literature at any level, your exam will probably entail some form of analysis of poetry. This portion of the work traditionally causes a lot of anxiety to pupils due to the bad reputation that poetry had and its association with being very difficult and very boring.
However, if you know what you are doing, the poetry exam is actually a very simple thing to do and an awesome way to bump up your grade. It will take a fair bit of hard work, but if you follow the tips I am going to give you, you should have a strong chance of getting a good mark.
Glossary
Before I start, here is a glossary explaining some of the terms I will be using throughout the article.
Stanza - Each "paragraph" of a poem. Also known as a verse.
Rhythm - The way the poem sounds when it is read.
Structure - The way the poem is laid out on the page.
Rhyme - The same sound being used to add emphasis or rhythm. (e.g. time and lime)
Enjambment - Adding an unusual line break into a poem to add emphasis.
Alliteration - Starting words in sequence with the same sound or letter to add power or rhythm. (e.g. slithering snake)
Notes
My first tip involves going through the poems beforehand. The temptation is to just copy notes from what the teacher says or from a revision guide. These notes are often useful and can give you a starting point. but the higher marks often come from noticing some of the more subtle and clever tricks the poet uses to make their poem more effective to its readers. If you know the material inside out, you are guaranteed a strong mark.
Now, I will use an example to illustrate my point. The following lines are from the final two stanzas of "Havisham" by Carol Ann Duffy from the AQA Poetry Anthology.
...Love's
hate behind a white veil; a red balloon bursting
in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding cake.
Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon.
Don't think it's only the heart that b-b-b-breaks.
In my revision guide, the points brought to attention were:
1) "White veil" normally used to hide happiness. Opposite this time.
2) The balloon could be a metaphor for hopes being dashed.
3) Honeymoon is usually happy, but is now associated with a painful death.
4) Last line could indicate that her mind is also broken or even the body of the man.
From reading it myself, I instantly noted that the enjambment between "Love's" and "hate" shows that Duffy wanted to emphasise how far apart those emotions were (stanza break) yet how close they were in the protagonist's mind (follow immediately on from each other). This point instantly shows you are an above average candidate.
Another point I noticed was that the "red balloon" could be a metaphor for the life of the main, a fact supported by red being the colour of blood and danger. The alliteration "balloon bursting" adds emphasis to her crazed emotions and the "Bang" indicates how quickly life can be taken away and how easy it would be for her to snap.
Both of these are points that weren't included in the revision guide and would therefore gain you a high grade from the examiner.
Introductions & Conclusions
Introductions and conclusions are a part of your essays that you have to be incredibly careful about. A decent introduction can be a good start to your essay and the conclusion at the end should be a solid summary of the points you made throughout the poem and your own personal opinions. They don't have many marks allocated to them, but they will help to shape the examiner's view of your writing in general.
Here are some examples of introductions. The good introduction is in green and the bad one is in red.
The poems I will be comparing are "Havisham" by Carol Ann Duffy and "Hitcher" by Simon Armitage. Both of these poems revolve around the theme of evil and murder, although the latter is to different degrees.
This is short and to the point. It doesn't ramble on about pointless facts and sets the scene for the essay well, stating clearly why the poems have been chosen and how they connect with each other.
I have chosen to compare "Hitcher" and "Havisham". "Hitcher" is by Simon Armitage who was born in 1963 and writes a lot of poems about emotion and evil. He studied at Leeds University and now teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University. "Havisham" is by Carol Ann Duffy, who was recently appointed the Poet Laureate, a position she has been unwilling to take on in the past due to the implications of having a homosexual person in the role. She is also the first woman to ascend to this honour.
This is a bad intro because it is full of pointless information that has no relevance to your essay. All it does is waste the time in the exam that you could spend writing the main body of your essay.
Conclusions follow basically the same set up. Ensure that all of the information within them is relevant and actually adds to the strength of your essay instead of simply rambling on about nothing much.
Personal Opinions
One thing that examiners absolutely love is candidates that feel strongly about the poems and are able to express their own personal feelings as well as the poet's intentions. Whatever opinion you hold, you will still gain a lot of marks for them, as long as you can justify them effectively.
I will use the same poem as last time for an example. This is an example of me justifying my opinion on the final line of the poem.
I found the final line of Havisham completely chilling. The stuttering of "b-b-b-breaks" indicated the incredibly fragile mental state of the poem's protagonist and it makes me feel as if she could do absolutely anything as the man who had jilted her had completely ruined her life and nothing mattered to her any more. This connects with the fact that she was "cawing Nooooo" earlier in the poem, showing that she had been reduced to her base, animalistic feelings and was no longer capable of reason or sensible weighing up of potential actions.
That paragraph shows what my opinions on a certain part of the poem are. This shows the examiner that I have looked further into the poem than simply what is written in the textbook. It's things like that that allow candidates to access the higher grades.
Conclusion
So, after reading all of my information, I would hope that you will be able to get a strong mark in your poetry exam which will do wonders for your overall English grade. I'm hoping that the addition of some personal opinion will help to make the experience more interesting to students instead of the way it is currently taught with the teacher basically reading stuff out of a revision guide.
If you are doing English Language or English Literature at any level, your exam will probably entail some form of analysis of poetry. This portion of the work traditionally causes a lot of anxiety to pupils due to the bad reputation that poetry had and its association with being very difficult and very boring.
However, if you know what you are doing, the poetry exam is actually a very simple thing to do and an awesome way to bump up your grade. It will take a fair bit of hard work, but if you follow the tips I am going to give you, you should have a strong chance of getting a good mark.
Glossary
Before I start, here is a glossary explaining some of the terms I will be using throughout the article.
Stanza - Each "paragraph" of a poem. Also known as a verse.
Rhythm - The way the poem sounds when it is read.
Structure - The way the poem is laid out on the page.
Rhyme - The same sound being used to add emphasis or rhythm. (e.g. time and lime)
Enjambment - Adding an unusual line break into a poem to add emphasis.
Alliteration - Starting words in sequence with the same sound or letter to add power or rhythm. (e.g. slithering snake)
Notes
My first tip involves going through the poems beforehand. The temptation is to just copy notes from what the teacher says or from a revision guide. These notes are often useful and can give you a starting point. but the higher marks often come from noticing some of the more subtle and clever tricks the poet uses to make their poem more effective to its readers. If you know the material inside out, you are guaranteed a strong mark.
Now, I will use an example to illustrate my point. The following lines are from the final two stanzas of "Havisham" by Carol Ann Duffy from the AQA Poetry Anthology.
...Love's
hate behind a white veil; a red balloon bursting
in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding cake.
Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon.
Don't think it's only the heart that b-b-b-breaks.
In my revision guide, the points brought to attention were:
1) "White veil" normally used to hide happiness. Opposite this time.
2) The balloon could be a metaphor for hopes being dashed.
3) Honeymoon is usually happy, but is now associated with a painful death.
4) Last line could indicate that her mind is also broken or even the body of the man.
From reading it myself, I instantly noted that the enjambment between "Love's" and "hate" shows that Duffy wanted to emphasise how far apart those emotions were (stanza break) yet how close they were in the protagonist's mind (follow immediately on from each other). This point instantly shows you are an above average candidate.
Another point I noticed was that the "red balloon" could be a metaphor for the life of the main, a fact supported by red being the colour of blood and danger. The alliteration "balloon bursting" adds emphasis to her crazed emotions and the "Bang" indicates how quickly life can be taken away and how easy it would be for her to snap.
Both of these are points that weren't included in the revision guide and would therefore gain you a high grade from the examiner.
Introductions & Conclusions
Introductions and conclusions are a part of your essays that you have to be incredibly careful about. A decent introduction can be a good start to your essay and the conclusion at the end should be a solid summary of the points you made throughout the poem and your own personal opinions. They don't have many marks allocated to them, but they will help to shape the examiner's view of your writing in general.
Here are some examples of introductions. The good introduction is in green and the bad one is in red.
The poems I will be comparing are "Havisham" by Carol Ann Duffy and "Hitcher" by Simon Armitage. Both of these poems revolve around the theme of evil and murder, although the latter is to different degrees.
This is short and to the point. It doesn't ramble on about pointless facts and sets the scene for the essay well, stating clearly why the poems have been chosen and how they connect with each other.
I have chosen to compare "Hitcher" and "Havisham". "Hitcher" is by Simon Armitage who was born in 1963 and writes a lot of poems about emotion and evil. He studied at Leeds University and now teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University. "Havisham" is by Carol Ann Duffy, who was recently appointed the Poet Laureate, a position she has been unwilling to take on in the past due to the implications of having a homosexual person in the role. She is also the first woman to ascend to this honour.
This is a bad intro because it is full of pointless information that has no relevance to your essay. All it does is waste the time in the exam that you could spend writing the main body of your essay.
Conclusions follow basically the same set up. Ensure that all of the information within them is relevant and actually adds to the strength of your essay instead of simply rambling on about nothing much.
Personal Opinions
One thing that examiners absolutely love is candidates that feel strongly about the poems and are able to express their own personal feelings as well as the poet's intentions. Whatever opinion you hold, you will still gain a lot of marks for them, as long as you can justify them effectively.
I will use the same poem as last time for an example. This is an example of me justifying my opinion on the final line of the poem.
I found the final line of Havisham completely chilling. The stuttering of "b-b-b-breaks" indicated the incredibly fragile mental state of the poem's protagonist and it makes me feel as if she could do absolutely anything as the man who had jilted her had completely ruined her life and nothing mattered to her any more. This connects with the fact that she was "cawing Nooooo" earlier in the poem, showing that she had been reduced to her base, animalistic feelings and was no longer capable of reason or sensible weighing up of potential actions.
That paragraph shows what my opinions on a certain part of the poem are. This shows the examiner that I have looked further into the poem than simply what is written in the textbook. It's things like that that allow candidates to access the higher grades.
Conclusion
So, after reading all of my information, I would hope that you will be able to get a strong mark in your poetry exam which will do wonders for your overall English grade. I'm hoping that the addition of some personal opinion will help to make the experience more interesting to students instead of the way it is currently taught with the teacher basically reading stuff out of a revision guide.