The last post!

If you’re looking to get an B, A or A* you might want to look at the terms below. Not all of them are strictly necessary (although you should clearly know terms such as metaphor!) but if you understand them and can discuss them they certainly won’t do your grades any harm. Also, if you are looking to continue to A level English knowing these will be useful.

Glossary of Poetic Terms

Alliteration
The repetition of the same consonant sounds at any place, but often at the beginning of words. Some famous examples of alliteration are tongue twisters such as ‘She sells seashells by the seashore’ and ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers’.

Assonance
The repetition or a pattern of (the same) vowel sounds, usually in the middle of a word, such as
suppose and roses.

Couplet
In a poem, a pair of lines that are the same length and (usually) rhyme and form a complete thought. Shakespearean sonnets usually end in a couplet as does the Poem ‘Anne Hathaway’:

‘I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head

as he held me upon that next best bed.’

Enjambement

A line ending in which the sense continues, with no punctuation, into the following line or stanza.

”But in contentment I still feel

The need of some imperishable bliss.”

Hyperbole
A figure of speech in which deliberate exaggeration is used for emphasis. Many everyday expressions are examples of hyperbole: tons of money, a flood of tears, dying of hunger (when you really just need a sandwich!) etc.

Imagery

The use of pictures, figures of speech and description to evoke ideas feelings, objects actions, states of mind etc. Similes, metaphors and personification all create imagery.

Litotes
A figure of speech in which a positive is stated by negating its opposite. Some examples of litotes:
no small victory, not a bad idea, not unhappy.

Metaphor
A figure of speech in which two things are compared, usually by saying one thing is another ‘the room was an oven’, or by substituting a more descriptive word for the more common or usual word that would be expected. Some examples of metaphors: the world’s a stage, he was a lion in battle, drowning in debt, and a sea of troubles.

It is probably the most important figure of speech to comment on in an essay.

Simile
A figure of speech in which two things are compared using the word “like” or “as.” ‘The room was as hot as an oven’

Personification
A figure of speech in which non-human things or abstract ideas are given human attributes:
the car coughed and spluttered, dead leaves danced in the wind, blind justice.

Nostalgia – A feeling of loss or longing for the past.

Onomatopoeia
A figure of speech in which words are used to imitate sounds. Examples of onomatopoeic words are: buzz, hiss, zing, clippety-clop, cock-a-doodle-do, pop, splat, thump, tick-tock.

Another example of onomatopoeia is found in this line from Tennyson’s Come Down, O Maid:
“The moan of doves in immemorial elms,/And murmuring of innumerable bees”. The repeated “m/n” sounds reinforce the idea of “murmuring” by imitating the hum of insects on a warm summer day.

Refrain
A phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated throughout a poem, usually after every stanza.

Rhyme
The occurrence of the same or similar sounds at the end of two or more words.


Stanza
A better word to refer to a verse in a poem.

Stress
The prominence or emphasis given to particular syllables. Stressed syllables usually stand out because they have long, rather than short, vowels, or because they have a different pitch or are louder than other syllables. A stressed syllable is the one you can say forcefully; it usually sounds very odd if you put emphasis on an unstressed syllable, so you can say FOOTball, but footBALL sounds weird. ‘Foot’ is the stressed syllable, ‘ball’ is the unstressed one.

Symbol

When a word, phrase or image ‘stands for’ an idea or theme. The sun could symbolize life and energy or a red rose could symbolize romantic love.


Read through all your poems today and listen to your podcasts. Work out which combinations of 4 poems (1 Heaney, 1 Clarke and 2 bank) you will use for the following lit poem questions


Compare the ways that the idea of death is presented in four of the poems you have studied from the AQA English Literature Anthology.
To do this, choose two poems from List A and two poems from List B.
List A List B
At a Potato Digging (Heaney) The Affliction of Margaret (Wordsworth)
Mid-Term Break (Heaney) On my first Sonne (Jonson)
Cold Knap Lake (Clarke) Tichbornes Elegy (Tichborne)
The Field-Mouse (Clarke) The Laboratory (Browning)
Remember to compare:
the idea of death in the poems
how death is presented. (36 marks)


Answer both parts (a) and (b)
(a) Compare the effectiveness of the endings of A Difficult Birth, Easter 1998 by Gillian Clarke and Digging by Seamus Heaney and then
(b) Compare the effectiveness of the endings of two poems from the Pre-1914 Poetry Bank.
(36 marks)


Some readers may find the poems in the AQA English Literature Anthology depressing. How do you respond to the content and style of these poems?
Compare your responses to The Affliction of Margaret by William Wordsworth with your
responses to one poem by Seamus Heaney, one poem by Gillian Clarke and one other poem
from the Pre-1914 Poetry Bank.
(36 marks)

Answer both parts (a) and (b)
(a) Compare how children are presented in ëOn my first Sonneí by Ben Jonson and The Song of the Old Mother by W.B. Yeats.
Compare:
! the children in the poems
! how the children are presented.
and then
(b) Compare how animals are presented in ëThe Field-Mouse by Gillian Clarke and
Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney.
Compare:
! the animals in the poems
! how the animals are presented. (36 marks)



Compare how the writers present parents in four poems from the AQA English Literature
Anthology.
To do this, choose two poems from List A and two poems from List B.
A B
Catrin (Clarke) On my first Sonne (Jonson)
Follower (Heaney) The Song of the Old Mother (Yeats)
Digging (Heaney) The Affliction of Margaret (Wordsworth)
Cold Knap Lake (Clarke) Little Boy Lost/Little Boy Found (Blake)
Remember to compare:
! the parents in the poems
! how the writers present the parents by the ways they write about them. (36 marks)



Did you enjoy reading the poems in the AQA English Literature Anthology?
Compare your responses to Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney with one poem by
Gillian Clarke and two poems from the Pre-1914 Poetry Bank.
Compare:
! your responses to the characters and situations
! your responses to the ways the poems are written. (36 marks)

Here are some links to exam papers of the last 4 years

http://store.aqa.org.uk/qual/gcse/qp-ms/AQA-3712H-W-QP-JUN07.PDF
http://store.aqa.org.uk/qual/gcse/qp-ms/AQA-3712H-W-QP-JUN08.PDF
http://store.aqa.org.uk/qual/gcse/qp-ms/AQA-3712F-W-QP-JUN09.PDF
http://store.aqa.org.uk/qual/gcse/qp-ms/AQA-3712-H-W-QP-JUN10.PDF


Good luck!



have a look at the poetry questions and the Of Mice and Men questions. Plan each response for 5 minutes...at this point it would be good revision to plan for all of the questions rather than write one or two essays in full ..consider all of the types of questions that could come up.