Unseen poetry questions to test yourself!

For each one, do the following:

Remind yourself of the Assessment Objectives for this question:

Remind yourself of the mark scheme for this question:

Then, for each question:

o Highlight the key words from the question, then read the title and the poem
carefully thinking about words and phrases that are relevant to the question
o Make sure that you establish what the poem is about and DON’T PANIC! Before
you begin to think about planning an answer to the question

Next, consider these questions:

o What are the main ideas of the poem?
o What is the tone of the poem? (mood)
o How does the poet feel?
o How does the poet make you (the reader) feel?
o What words and phrases from the poem are relevant to the question?
o Do they include any language or structural devices? If so, highlight them!
o What is the effect of these language and structural devices on the reader?
o Why was the poem written?
o What are the writer’s intentions?
o What is the poem’s message?

Language, Structure and Form: what to look for:

Language Structure Form

o Similes o Repetition o Ballad
o Metaphors o Stanzas o Sonnet
o Alliteration o Rhyme Scheme (irregular, o Free Verse
o Onomatopoeia regular?) o Humorous
 o Assonance o Rhythm o Lyrical
o Imagery o Beat o Narrative
o Hyperbole o Iambic Pentameter o Epitaph
o Oxymoron o Caesura
o Personification o Enjambment
o Symbolism o o Rhyming Couplet

Finally, now you are a master of planning: complete the response! There should be at least three sides to give the
examiner as much opportunity to give you as many marks as possible.

Finally express ASSESS YOURSELF!

Read through your response, have you:

 Demonstrated a good understanding of the ideas raised in the poem?

 Commented on the poet’s use of language?
 Commented on the poet’s use of structure?
 Used relevant examples to support your ideas?
 Referred to the question throughout the response?
 Written an extended response?
 Proofread and spelt keywords accurately?

Finally, complete a ‘WWW’ and ‘EBI’ for your response. Or, if you are revising in pairs, use it to peer assess. If you
feel confident with the mark scheme, give yourself a mark. Remember, your teacher will be more than happy to read
your essays/plans, however, it is always best for you to have a read through and judge your own ability first – it’ll
really help you in the exam!
If you are still struggling to undertand the poems. Here are some helpful guides:

Mood (purpose)
First ideas Is the poem meant to be: Quotation
Reading What do you think  funny Find a quotation that
Read the poem through three the poem is about?  scary shows the mood of the
times.
 serious poem:
 interesting
 happy
or something else …?
Words / language
Which are used in your poem? Words
Pick out an
 repetition
interesting word or
 command phrase Structure Opinion
 simile How many verses are there?
 metaphor How does the poem change? What do you like/dislike
 alliteration about the poem?
Why is this a good
word or phrase to
Give an example of one use?
language feature you ticked.
 AQA Literature 8702 Paper 2: Section C: Question 2: Comparison

Hungry for more? If you want to practise the final question of the Paper 2 exam for Literature, which is worth 8
marks, go through the extensive collection of poetry attached and compare the poet’s attitudes, ideas and methods
for presenting their themes. Start with the poems which consider the same themes.
One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice* losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

– Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop

*practice – Please note the American spelling. English spelling: practise

2 7 . 1 In ‘One Art,’ how does the speaker convey their feelings about the subject of loss?

[24 marks]
The Wild Swans at Coole*

The trees are in their autumn beauty,

The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me

Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous* wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,

And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,

Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

W. B. Yeats

2 7 . 1 In ‘The Wild Swans at Coole,’ how does the poet present his feelings about the swans in this
poem?

[24 marks]
The Rear-Guard
(Hindenburg Line, April 1917)

Groping along the tunnel, step by step,

He winked his prying torch with patching glare
From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.

Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know,

A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
And he, exploring fifty feet below
The rosy gloom of battle overhead.

Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw someone lie

Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug,
And stooped to give the sleeper’s arm a tug.
‘I’m looking for headquarters.’ No reply.
‘God blast your neck!’ (For days he’d had no sleep.)
‘Get up and guide me through this stinking place.’

Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,

And flashed his beam across the livid* face
Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore
Agony dying hard ten days before;
And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound.

Alone he staggered on until he found

Dawn’s ghost that filtered down a shafted stair
To the dazed, muttering creatures underground
Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.

At last, with sweat of horror in his hair,

He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,
Unloading hell behind him step by step.
Siegfried Sassoon

2 7 . 1 In ‘The Rear-Guard,’ how does the poet present his ideas about the soldier’s journey?

[24 marks]
In Mrs Tilscher's class

You could travel up the Blue Nile

with your finger, tracing the route
while Mrs Tilscher chanted the scenery.
”Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum. Aswan.”
That for an hour,
then a skittle of milk
and the chalky Pyramids rubbed into dust.
A window opened with a long pole.
The laugh of a bell swung by a running child.

This was better than home. Enthralling books.

The classroom glowed like a sweetshop.
Sugar paper. Coloured shapes. Brady and Hindley
faded, like the faint, uneasy smudge of a mistake.
Mrs Tilscher loved you. Some mornings, you found
she'd left a gold star by your name.
The scent of a pencil slowly, carefully, shaved.
A xylophone's nonsense heard from another form.

Over the Easter term the inky tadpoles changed

from commas into exclamation marks. Three frogs
hopped in the playground, freed by a dunce
followed by a line of kids, jumping and croaking
away from the lunch queue. A rough boy
told you how you were born. You kicked him, but stared
at your parents, appalled, when you got back
home

That feverish July, the air tasted of electricity.

A tangible alarm made you always untidy, hot,
fractious under the heavy, sexy sky. You asked her
how you were born and Mrs Tilscher smiled
then turned away. Reports were handed out.
You ran through the gates, impatient to be grown
the sky split open into a thunderstorm.

Carol Anne Duffy

2 7 . 1 In ‘In Mrs Tilscher’s Class,’ how does the poet present ideas about childhood memories?
[24 marks]
Fantasy of an African Boy

Such a peculiar lot

we are, we people
without money, in daylong
yearlong sunlight, knowing
money is somewhere, somewhere.

Everybody says it’s big

bigger brain bother now,
money. Such millions and millions
of us don’t manage at all
without it, like war going on.

And we can’t eat it. Yet

without it our heads alone
stay big, as lots and lots do,
coming from nowhere joyful,
going nowhere happy.

We can’t drink it up. Yet

without it we shrivel when small
and stop forever
where we stopped, as lots and lots do.

We can’t read money for books.

Yet without it we don’t
read, don’t write numbers,
don’t open gates in other countries,
as lots and lots never do.

We can’t use money to bandage

sores, can’t pound it
to powder for sick eyes
and sick bellies. Yet without
it, flesh melts from our bones.

Such walled-round gentlemen

overseas minding money! Such
bigtime gentlemen, body guarded
because of too much respect
and too many wishes on them:

too many wishes, everywhere,

wanting them to let go
magic of money, and let it fly
away, everywhere, day and night,
just like dropped leaves in wind!

James Berry

2 7 . 1 In ‘Fantasy of an African Boy,’ how does the poet present ideas about the significance of money?
[24 marks]
The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

2 7 . 1 In ‘The Road Not Taken,’ how does the poet present ideas about the importance of making
decisions?
[24 marks]
Island Man

Morning
and island man wakes up
to the sound of blue surf
in his head
the steady breaking and wombing

wild seabirds
and fishermen pushing out to sea
the sun surfacing defiantly
from the east
of his small emerald island
he always comes back groggily groggily

Comes back to sands

of a grey metallic soar
to surge of wheels
to dull North Circular* roar

muffling muffling
his crumpled pillow waves
island man heaves himself

Another London day

Grace Nichols

2 7 . 1 In ‘Island Man,’ how does the poet present ideas about place?
[24 marks]
An Old Woman

An old woman grabs

hold of your sleeve
and tags along.

She wants a fifty paise coin.

She says she will take you
to the horseshoe shrine.

You’ve seen it already.

She hobbles along anyway
and tightens her grip on your shirt.

She won’t let you go.

You know how old women are.
They stick to you like a burr.

You turn around and face her

with an air of finality.
You want to end the farce.

When you hear her say,

‘What else can an old woman do
on hills as wretched as these?’

You look right at the sky.

Clear through the bullet holes
she has for her eyes.

And as you look on

the cracks that begin around her eyes
spread beyond her skin.

And the hills crack.

And the temples crack.
And the sky falls

With a plate-glass clatter

Around the shatterproof crone
who stands alone.

And you are reduced

to so much small change
in her hand.

Arun Kolatkar

2 7 . 1 In ‘An Old Woman,’ how does the poet create sympathy for the old woman?
[24 marks]
Blessing

The skin cracks like a pod.

There never is enough water.

Imagine the drip of it,

the small splash, echo
in a tin mug,
the voice of a kindly god.

Sometimes, the sudden rush

of fortune. The municipal pipe bursts,
silver crashes to the ground
and the flow has found
a roar of tongues. From the huts,
a congregation : every man woman
child for streets around
butts in, with pots,
brass, copper, aluminium,
plastic buckets,
frantic hands,

and naked children

screaming in the liquid sun,
their highlights polished to perfection,
flashing light,
as the blessing sings
over their small bones.

Imtiaz Dharker

2 7 . 1 In ‘Blessing,’ how does the poet present ideas about poverty and wealth?
[24 marks]
For Heidi with Blue Hair

When you dyed your hair blue

(or, at least, ultramarine
for the clipped sides, with a crest
of jet-black spikes on top)
you were sent home from schoo

because, as the headmistress put it,

although dyed hair was not
specifically forbidden, yours
was, apart from anything else,
not done in the school colours.

Tears in the kitchen, telephone-calls

to school from your freedom-loving father:
‘She’s not a punk* in her behaviour;
it’s just a style.’ (You wiped your eyes,
also not in a school colour.)

‘She discussed it with me first –

we checked the rules.’ ‘And anyway, Dad,
it cost twenty-five dollars.
Tell them it won’t wash out –
not even if I wanted to try.’

It would have been unfair to mention

your mother’s death, but that
shimmered behind the arguments.
The school had nothing else against you;
the teachers twittered and gave in.

Next day your black friend had hers done

in grey, white and flaxen yellow –
the school colours precisely:
an act of solidarity*, a witty
tease. The battle was already won.

Fleur Adcock

2 7 . 1 In ‘Heidi with Blue Hair,’ how does the poet present ideas about individuality?
[24 marks]
Still I Rise

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou

2 7 . 1 In ‘Still I Rise,’ how does the poet present ideas about determination and injustice?
[24 marks]
O Captain! My Captain!

Captain! My Captain! Related Poem Content Details

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Walt Whitman

2 7 . 1 In ‘O Captain! My Captain!’ how does the poet present ideas about loyalty?
[24 marks]
Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

2 7 . 1 In ‘Invictus,’ how does the poet present ideas about fate and determination?
[24 marks]
Alpine Letter

Love? If you’d asked me yesterday, I’d say

love is a saw that amputates the heart.
I’d call it my disease, I’d call it plague.
But yesterday, I hadn’t heard from you.

So call it the weight of light that holds one soul

connected to another. Or a tear
that falls in all gratitude, becoming sea.
Call it the only word that comforts me.

The sight of your writing has me on the floor,

the curve of each letter looped about my heart.
And in this ink, the tenor of your voice.
And in this ink the movement of your hand.

The Alps, now, cut their teeth upon the sky,

and pressing on to set these granite jaws
between us, not a mile will do me harm.
Your letter, in my coat, will keep me warm.

Ros Barber

2 7 . 1 In ‘Alpine Letter,’ how does the poet present ideas about love?
[24 marks]
Piano

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;

Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling
strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she
sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song

Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cozy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour

With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the
past.

D. H. Lawrence

2 7 . 1 In ‘Piano,’ how does the speaker present ideas about the significance of memories?
[24 marks]
Telephone Conversation

The price seemed reasonable, location

Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived
Off premises. Nothing remained
But self-confession. “Madam”, I warned,
“I hate a wasted journey – I am African.”
Silence. Silenced transmission of
Pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,
Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled
Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was, foully.
“HOW DARK?”...I had not misheard...“ARE YOU LIGHT
OR VERY DARK?” Button B. Button A*. Stench
Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.
Red booth. Red pillar-box. Red double-tiered
Omnibus squelching tar. It was real! Shamed
By ill-mannered silence, surrender
Pushed dumbfoundment to beg simplification.
Considerate she was, varying the emphasis –
“ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?” Revelation came.
“You mean – like plain or milk chocolate?”
Her accent was clinical, crushing in its light
Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted,
I chose. “West African sepia” – and as afterthought,
“Down in my passport.” Silence for spectroscopic
Flight of fancy, till truthfulness changed her accent
Hard on the mouthpiece. “WHAT’S THAT?” conceding
“DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.” “Like brunette.”
“THAT’S DARK, ISN’T IT?” “Not altogether.
Facially, I am brunette, but madam, you should see
The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet
Are a peroxide blond. Friction, caused –
Foolishly, madam – by sitting down, has turned
My bottom raven black – One moment, madam! – sensing
Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap
About my ears – “Madam,” I pleaded, “wouldn’t you rather
See for yourself?”

Wole Soyinka

2 7 . 1 In ‘Telephone Conversation,’ how does the poet present ideas about attitudes towards race?
[24 marks]
Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time, son,

they used to laugh with their hearts
and laugh with their eyes;
but now they only laugh with their teeth,
while their ice-block-cold eyes
search behind my shadow.

There was a time indeed

they used to shake hands with their hearts;
but that’s gone, son.
Now they shake hands without hearts
while their left hands search
my empty pockets.

‘Feel at home’! ‘Come again’;

they say, and when I come
again and feel
at home, once, twice,
there will be no thrice –
for then I find doors shut on me.

So I have learned many things, son.

I have learned to wear many faces
like dresses – homeface,
officeface, streetface, hostface,
cocktailface, with all their conforming smiles
like a fixed portrait smile.

And I have learned, too,

to laugh with only my teeth
and shake hands without my heart.
I have also learned to say, ‘Goodbye’,
when I mean ‘Good-riddance’;
to say ‘Glad to meet you’,
without being glad; and to say ‘It’s been
nice talking to you’, after being bored.

But believe me, son.

I want to be what I used to be
when I was like you. I want
to unlearn all these muting things.
Most of all, I want to relearn
how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror
shows only my teeth like a snake’s bare fangs!

So show me, son,

how to laugh; show me how
I used to laugh and smile
once upon a time when I was like you.

Gabriel Okara

2 7 . 1 In ‘Once Upon a Time,’ how does the speaker present their feelings about the effects of age?
[24 marks]
A Mother in a Refugee Camp

No Madonna and Child could touch

Her tenderness for a son
She soon would have to forget. . . .
The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea,
Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs
And dried-up bottoms waddling in labored steps
Behind blown-empty bellies. Other mothers there
Had long ceased to care, but not this one:
She held a ghost smile between her teeth,
and in her eyes the memory
Of a mother’s pride. . . . She had bathed him
And rubbed him down with bare palms.
She took from their bundle of possessions
A broken comb and combed
The rust-colored hair left on his skull
And then – humming in her eyes – began carefully to part it.
In their former life this was perhaps
A little daily act of no consequence
Before his breakfast and school; now she did it
Like putting flowers on a tiny grave.

Chinua Achebe
2 7 . 1 In ‘A Mother in a Refugee Camp,’ how does the poet present ideas about loss?
[24 marks]
Do not go gentle into that good night

do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

2 7 . 1 In ‘Do not go gentle into that goodnight,’ how does the poet present ideas about Death?
[24 marks]
First they came…

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

Unknown

2 7 . 1 In ‘First they came,’ how does the poet present their ideas about speaking out against injustice?
[24 marks]
Not My Business

They picked Akanni up one morning

Beat him soft like clay
And stuffed him down the belly
Of a waiting jeep.

What business of mine is it

So long they don’t take the yam
From my savouring mouth?

They came one night

Booted the whole house awake
And dragged Danladi out,
Then off to a lengthy absence.

What business of mine is it

So long they don’t take the yam
From my savouring mouth?

Chinwe went to work one day

Only to find her job was gone:
No query, no warning, no probe –
Just one neat sack for a stainless record.

What business of mine is it

So long they don’t take the yam
From my savouring mouth?

And then one evening

As I sat down to eat my yam
A knock on the door froze my hungry hand.

The jeep was waiting on my bewildered lawn

Waiting, waiting in its usual silence.

Niyi Osundare

2 7 . 1 In ‘Not My Business,’ how does the poet present their ideas about speaking out against injustice?
[24 marks]