1. Some key questions to ask

2.  What can we learn about the speaker’s character?  Is the character merely a voice meditating on a theme?  Does the speaker have a specific personality?  What characterises the speaker?  (Remember that the speaker may be a persona. The persona and the poet may be totally different entities.I

3.  Here are some examples. Make sure you have the vocabulary necessary to describe tone and mood. Use the hand out you have been given.  jovial  indignant  serious  dignified  tense  angry  excited  contemptuous  embarrassed

4.  If the speaker is addressing a particular person why is he/she interested in him/her?  Some poems are addressed to a specific person or group of readers.  Others, like dramatic monologues, address a silent auditor.  Others are simply meditations on a universal theme.  The identity will be important to the poem.

5.  Try to understand the setting, it will often be implicit so you will need to work quite hard to do this.  Is the poem occasioned by a particular event or place?  Is a particular situation being described?

6.  Often themes are stated in the final lines.  Some poems use fairly straightforward literal language others may use lots of figurative language and symbols.  The theme may be explicit and use the actual word of the theme.  The theme may be implicit and you will need to work hard to find out what it is.

7.  Is the speaker recounting events of the past or the present? If past events are being recalled what present meaning do they have for the speaker?  The perspective will be very closely linked to the persona.

8.  How do the meanings of words, and all their possible shades and levels of meaning, combine to create an overall effect?  Always think of connotation (association) and not only denotation (dictionary meanings).  You have to be able to pick up on subtleties here.

9.  What is the literal meaning of the figurative language used?  Some poems begin to open up when you recognize patterns of imagery.  Why does the poet use these particular images and analogies?  What is the rhetorical significance of the poet’s use of language?  Does the poet use various sound techniques like rhyme and onomatopoeia?  Never simply list the devices used. This will not win you any marks.

10.  The most powerful symbols are often those that do not specify the ideas they represent. You will need to think hard to identify the symbolism in many poems.

11.  Is it free verse or a specific poetic form such as a sonnet?  What verb or stanza patterns are there?  Don´t simply state what they are without saying why they are that form and what the form adds to the poem?

12.  The sound must match the sense.  Is the language presented with intentional rhythmic effect?  Is it slow, fast, gentle and so on?  What are the rhyming patterns and how do they help bring the poem to life?

13.  Your response may change with the intensity of your reading.  Be honest here.  The examiners really want to read an intelligent, educated personal response. They want to know how the poem affected you as an individual.