Poetry (Prescribed Textbook) - Appreciation and Interpretation
The poetry section asks you to interpret a poem and to name the devices that create its effect. Typical tasks: explain given lines, complete a table of figures of speech with quotations, identify the rhyme scheme or tone, and write an appreciation using given points.
Devices you must recognise
- Simile: comparison with like or as.
- Metaphor: direct identification without like or as.
- Personification: human qualities given to a non-human thing.
- Alliteration: repetition of an initial consonant sound.
- Onomatopoeia: a word imitating a sound.
- Hyperbole, oxymoron, apostrophe, repetition and refrain.
Writing an appreciation
Cover the title and poet, the central idea, tone and mood, two or three devices with quoted examples, the rhyme scheme, a special feature, and the message. The device and the quoted words must appear together - naming without quoting earns nothing.
Worked example
Line: "The tired road sleeps under the evening sky." Reasoning: roads cannot be tired or sleep, so the device is personification; "sleeps ... sky" contributes alliteration of s. If the question asks for the effect, say it makes the road seem exhausted after carrying traffic all day - do not merely repeat "it is personified".
Traps
Calling any comparison a simile when like or as is absent; labelling a line with a device without quoting it; paraphrasing the poem when the task is appreciation; writing the rhyme scheme without checking the final sounds of each line; ignoring the punctuation and layout, which often carry the tone.