Prescribed Poetry: Form, Figurative Language and Appreciation
Poetry questions ask for explanation and critical appreciation: how a sonnet's structure carries its argument, how an image works, what the tone is, why a line is ironic. In the WBCHSE English B corpus this includes Keats's 'The Poetry of Earth', Gieve Patel's 'On Killing a Tree', Rimbaud's 'Asleep in the Valley' and Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.
Core rules
- Form carries meaning. Keats uses a sonnet so that summer (octave) answers winter (sestet); Shakespeare turns at 'But thy eternal summer shall not fade' and seals the claim in the couplet.
- Extended metaphor needs unpacking. Patel's tree is both a tree and any rooted life; the poem's argument is that the visible trunk is not the source.
- Irony is structural, not decorative. In 'Asleep in the Valley' the sunlit, peaceful valley is contradicted by 'a hole in his side'.
- Always: device -> effect -> link to theme.
Worked example
Question: Why does the poet say that hacking and chopping will not kill the tree? Reasoning: the poem insists the tree 'has grown' slowly out of the earth, and its strength lies in the root hidden 'in the earth's cave', which must be pulled out and exposed. The irony of the imperative 'So hack and chop' is that violence at the surface is futile. Answer: 'Because the tree's life is stored in its concealed root, not its trunk; hacking only wounds the visible part. The poet uses the extended metaphor of a rooted life to argue that the source of vitality is invisible and must be dragged into the light before it dies.'
Traps
- Listing devices with no effect.
- Paraphrasing the poem and calling it appreciation.
- Missing the octave-sestet or octave-volta turn.
- Attributing feelings to the poet without textual proof.
- Ignoring form when the question is about structure.