Prescribed Poetry: Comprehension, Theme and Poetic Devices
Poetry questions punish literal reading. The examiner tests whether you can restate a line in plain prose, name the device with evidence, and state the poem's central idea. Three obstacles appear again and again: archaic vocabulary, inverted word order forced by metre, and metaphor treated as fact.
Devices you must be able to name
- tashbih - simile, signalled by cho, mesl-e, mānand-e.
- este'āre - metaphor, where the comparison word is absent.
- kenāye - indirect allusion; the literal sense is not intended.
- khetāb - apostrophe, address to an absent person, object or abstraction.
- qāfiye and radif - rhyme and the repeated word that follows it.
- tanāsob - clustering of related images for harmony.
Worked example
Illustrative line: ey gol-e bahār, chera khamush-i? Reasoning: ey gol is direct address, so khetāb; the flower stands for a beloved or for youth, so este'āre; the question is not asking for information but expressing wonder, so it is rhetorical. Plain restatement: 'O spring flower, why are you silent?' Theme: the transience of beauty and the poet's longing.
Traps that cost marks
Naming a device without pointing to the words that create it; confusing radif (after the rhyme) with qāfiye (the rhyme itself); translating metaphor literally and then writing a nonsense theme; ignoring the closing line, which often carries the poet's message; dropping the ezāfe when restating a genitive phrase.