Poetry and Literary Appreciation
Poetry questions in this paper ask you to name a device, explain its effect, and write a short critical appreciation of a prescribed poem. Marks are lost less often through not knowing the terms than through naming a device and stopping there.
Naming devices precisely
- Simile (like/as) and metaphor (direct identification) are not interchangeable labels.
- Personification gives an inanimate or abstract thing human action or feeling.
- Imagery is sensory detail; name the sense it appeals to.
- Sound devices: alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, refrain, enjambment, and rhyme scheme (label it - abab, aabb, abba).
From device to effect
Every device answer needs three moves: quote the words, name the device, state what it makes the reader feel or understand. The bare word "alliteration" earns nothing.
Critical appreciation
Open with poem and poet, then one sentence on the central idea. Give three devices with brief quotations and their effects, note any shift in tone, and close with an evaluation of the whole - not a retelling of the poem's situation.
Worked example
Stanza: "The lamp leans low across the page, / the clock ticks out the slow night through; / and words that once were bright with rage / lie quiet now, and soft, and true." Reasoning: page/rage and through/true rhyme alternately, so the scheme is abab. "Words ... lie quiet" gives words a human capacity to rest, which is personification. The contrast between "bright with rage" and "soft, and true" marks a shift from anger to acceptance, and the regular rhyme makes that calm feel deliberate rather than accidental.
Traps
Retelling the poem instead of analysing it; quoting without quotation marks; guessing the scheme from stanza one only; claiming a device with no textual evidence.