Poetry
Close reading from the top down
Poetry in STPM 920 tests sustained close reading of set and unseen poems: situation, speaker and tone; form and prosody; figurative language; and how structure shapes theme. Strong answers move from observation to effect to argument, quoting precisely and weaving short quotations into your own sentences.
Core rules
- Establish speaker, addressee, occasion and tone before naming devices.
- Identify form: sonnet, ode, dramatic monologue, free verse; note stanza shape, rhyme scheme, metre, enjambment and caesura.
- Analyse figuration and sound; explain what an image does, not merely what it compares.
- Track shifts and the volta; the ending often repositions the whole poem.
- For unseen poems, read twice: first for plain sense, then for pattern - repetition, contrast, shifts in tense or address. Annotate verbs and pronouns; they often carry the argument.
Worked example
Question: How does Shakespeare develop the theme of permanence in Sonnet 18? Quote: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Reasoning: the opening is a rhetorical question that proposes a conventional simile and then exceeds it; summer is shown as short and imperfect, while "But thy eternal summer shall not fade" marks the volta. The final couplet transfers permanence to the verse itself: the beloved survives because the poem survives. The Shakespearean form - three quatrains and a couplet - enacts the argument's turn from comparison to claim. Because the question asks about development, the answer must show change, not list features.
Traps
- Paraphrasing the poem instead of analysing its method.
- Confusing poet and speaker.
- Naming a metre or rhyme scheme without explaining its effect.
- Ignoring the question's focus, such as time, place or voice.
- Quoting a whole stanza without isolating the operative words.
- Reading biography into the text without evidence.