The Sunday News
Charles Dube
CONTEMPORARY poems — this means that they have been written in recent times about modern life. Unseen poems, means you will not know what they will be until you open your exam paper, where they will be printed along with the exam question.
Learn how to: identify the voice and situation in the poem you read, write sensibly about poems you have seen for the first time, pick out details to support your points, build your personal view into your response.
Reading a poem you have not seen before: When you read a poem for the first time, try to get an overall sense of what it is about. Do not be put off if you do not understand every last word and detail. Poems are often written to encourage readers to think and work things out. A good place to start with any poem is to think about the voice and situation.
The “voice” is the speaker of the poem. From whose perspective is the poem written? Is it the first person or a third person speaker? Does the voice have any particular characteristics, such as angry or sad tone? How would you describe the attitude of the voice? Some learners have problems in understanding what first, second or third person is when it comes to writing. We have the first person singular represented by “I” and “We” stands for second person plural. You stands for the second person — the person I am directly talking to.
Most of the time when we write essays we use the third person represented by “They”. It is easy to talk about the other person than myself or yourself. There is more comfort in talking about the other person even when describing them.
The “situation” is the subject matter of the poem. What happens in it? What does it describe? What ideas is it trying to put across to you?
Selecting details to support your points — Having identified what a poem is about and who is speaking, your next move should be to focus on the details. This means picking out words that you think are particularly effective or identifying images that work especially well. Focus on what effects these create. Be prepared to give your own opinions — what do you think and why?
As well as word choices you might also comment on the imagery within a poem. An image in poetry. (or any other type of writing) is a picture created in the mind of the reader by the poet’s words. Images may be descriptive — helping you to imagine how something looks, sounds, or tastes like; or an image might suggest a deeper meaning — bringing to mind a particular feeling or referring to a wider theme.
You should back up your ideas by including short quotations in your answer. Make sure your quotations support the points you are trying to make and try to show what they reveal about the poem. When writing about poetry you should avoid feature spotting, for example: The writer has some good alliteration on line . . .” This will not gain you any marks! You should, however, write about what poems mean and how they work.
Your study of poetry might require you to carry out a comparison. This means you will study two poems and consider how they are similar and different. Think about what the poems are about, the voice of each poet, the style of language used and the effect of each poem on the reader. As you answer a question on comparing poems you may wish to include some or all of these points:
The content of the poems — what they are about: the ideas the poet may have wanted us to think about; the mood or atmosphere of the poems; how they are written — words and phrases you find interesting, the way they are organised and your responses to the poems. How to approach your comparisons in poetry: One good way is to focus on one poem in the first part of your answer and then move on to write about the second poem, making links back to the first poem where they occur to you.
If you take this approach you need to make sure that you spend an equal amount of time on each poem. When writing a comparison you do not need to compare every single feature of the first poem with the second. It is suggested that you read both poems and focus on both of them in detail when you write. If you do this you will find any differences between them as you build your response.
Many readers or learners of literature find poetry quite difficult to understand and interpret. The way poetry is written or laid out scares readers. Poems are almost always written in lines which are grouped into stanzas. The mere sight of stanzas confuses learners who think the approach to poetry is different from prose texts. However, they can choose to focus on thematic issues just like in prose texts. It is a fact that you may find a lot of unfamiliar terms in poetry, forcing you to check for meanings from the dictionary or glossary of terms where they are provided.
Although these unfamiliar terms could be helpful, it is essential to develop an understanding of the general idea being put across (the sense or meaning), the intention (purpose, what feelings are evoked, and the tone of the poem.) What is tone? At times it is defined as follows: This express the writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward the subject, the reader, or herself or himself. I believe these tips from various researchers will help demystify the study of poetry and bring excitement in the classrooms.
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