Studied vs Unseen

Two poems given, one poem chosen

The poetry question is worth **40 marks in two parts**, and the second part is not like anything else on your papers. **Part a)** prints a named poem from your Anthology cluster beside a **genuinely unseen** poem, and asks you to compare them. Both are in front of you. **Part b)** asks about a **different poem from the same cluster, which you choose yourself**, from memory. Nothing is printed. That choice is the part students underestimate. Fifteen poems in a cluster, one decision, made in an exam room with the clock running. This module deals with both halves, and with the choice.

Read it slowly first

The instinct with an unseen poem is to start hunting: alliteration here, a metaphor there, enjambment in the third line. **Resist it.** A technique you have spotted with nothing to attach it to is worth almost nothing, and it is obvious in an answer: a list of devices with no argument holding them together. Read the poem twice for **meaning** and **tone** before you name anything. What is happening? Who is speaking, and how do they feel about it? Has the feeling changed by the end? Once you can answer those, every technique you find has a job: it is doing something to the meaning or the tone you have already identified.

What do you do first?

You turn over and there is an unseen poem you have never met. What is the best use of the first minute?

• Read it through twice, working out what is happening and how the speaker feels about it
• Start annotating every technique you can find
• Start writing the introduction to save time
• Skip it and write about the studied poem, which you know

Read the harbour poem

A practice poem written for this module, called "The Late Boat". Tap the ONE line that most shows the speaker's weariness with the routine.

• Every evening the same boat comes,
• low in the water, heavy with what it took.
• We count it in. We have always counted it in.
• The men step off and do not look up.

Three things to compare on

A comparison needs shared ground. For poems, these three do almost all of the work.

Match each feature to what it belongs to

Now an unseen one

A second practice poem, "Departure", of the kind you might be given unseen. Tap the ONE phrase that gives a feeling to something that cannot have one.

• She is going and
• the house knows first
• -
• the hall too wide,
• a chair
• pushed back,
• and the clock
• saying nothing it has not said before.

Which sentences compare?

Select the TWO sentences that compare the two practice poems rather than describing them in turn.

• Both poems make an absence felt through objects rather than through statement, but where the harbour poem uses a boat that keeps arriving, the second uses a chair that has stopped being sat in
• The first poem holds its regular line length throughout, while the second breaks apart into fragments, so one sounds like routine and the other like something coming undone
• In "The Late Boat" the poet uses repetition to create a sense of routine
• The second poem is also very effective and uses many techniques

Two shapes, two effects

Comparing form is the easiest place to start, because you can see it before you read a word.

Build one comparative paragraph

Put the moves of a single paragraph into the order that keeps it a comparison.

• State one idea about form, imagery or tone that is true of both poems
• Show how the first poem does it, quoting a few words
• Show how the second does the same thing differently, quoting a few words
• Say what the difference does to the reader

Open on tone

Build a topic sentence comparing the two practice poems on tone.

One paragraph, both poems

**"Compare how the two poems present absence."** "Both poems let an object carry the loss rather than stating it. In the first, the boat comes back 'heavy with what it took', and the phrase does two things at once: the weight is cargo and it is also everything the sea has had from the village, so the routine arrival is never only an arrival. "Departure" works the opposite way round. Nothing arrives; a chair is simply 'pushed back', and the ordinary detail is left standing where a person was. Where the first poem makes absence something that keeps returning, the second makes it something that has just stopped, and the reader feels the difference in the pace before they can name it." One idea, both poems, short quotations chosen for a particular word, and a closing sentence about effect. No technique is named at all, and it does not need to be.

Complete the poem paragraph

Both poems present absence through _____ rather than by stating it. The first keeps a regular _____, which makes the loss feel like something endured repeatedly, _____ the second breaks into short fragments. What the two share is the _____; what separates them is the _____.

Choosing your own poem

Part b) asks about a different poem from your cluster, chosen by you, from memory. Work out how to be ready for it.

• There are fifteen poems in your cluster. How many should you prepare properly for part b)?
• What makes a poem a good one to prepare?
• In the exam, the part b) question is about conflict, and your best-prepared poem is only loosely about conflict. What do you do?

Your turn: prepare for part b)

Choose one poem from your own Anthology cluster and set out why it is a poem you could rely on in part b). Use your own cluster, not the practice poems.

• Name the poem and say in one sentence what it is about and how the speaker feels
• Give two short quotations you could reproduce exactly from memory
• For one of them, say what a single word in it is doing
• Name two different questions this poem could answer, and say why