IB Diploma Programme Language A: Literature – Reading and Writing about Poetry Revision Notes

For full explanations and longer examples, start with the poetry study guide.

These revision notes cover reading and writing about poetry for IB Diploma Programme Language A: Literature, at SL and HL. It follows the current IB subject brief (first assessments for SL and HL 2021). The brief has no numbered sub-sections, so this unit maps to the area of exploration Readers, writers and texts. The same skills apply at both levels.

Course links: Language A: Literature hub · printable checklist · poetry practice questions · Readers, writers and texts revision notes.

Why this matters in the exam

• Paper 1 is a guided analysis of unseen literary passages “from different text types”: 1 h 15 min at SL, 2 h 15 min at HL, 35% of the grade at both levels. A poem can appear.
• The brief’s assessment objectives include “features of particular text types and literary forms” and “ways in which the use of language creates meaning”. Poetry analysis tests both directly.

Key terms

Term	Definition	Quick example
Speaker	The voice in the poem; not assumed to be the poet	“I” in a dramatic monologue
Addressee	The person or thing spoken to	“you” in a love sonnet
Apostrophe	Direct address to an absent person or an object	“O moon, …”
Tone	The speaker’s attitude	wry, tender, bitter
Iamb / trochee	da-DUM / DUM-da	“a-WAY” / “LIS-ten”
Iambic pentameter	Five iambs, ten syllables	“re-MEM-ber ME when I am GONE a-WAY”
Iambic tetrameter	Four iambs, eight syllables	Blake’s “London”, line 1
Enjambment	Sentence runs over the line break	“his hands / remember”
Caesura	Pause inside a line	“The kettle clicks. The house…”
End-stopped line	Sense pauses at the line end	line ends with a full stop
Volta	Turn in argument or mood	line 9 of a Petrarchan sonnet
Anaphora	Repetition at the start of lines	“In every…, / In every…”
Alliteration	Repeated initial consonants	“fickle, freckled”
Assonance	Repeated vowel sounds	“cold, slow, stone”
Sibilance	Repeated s/sh sounds	“soft, still, sleeping”
Symbol	Concrete thing standing for something larger	a rose for love or beauty
Juxtaposition	Contrasting things side by side	“forget and smile” / “remember and be sad”

Forms at a glance

Form	Shape	Typical use of the shape
Petrarchan sonnet	Octave (abbaabba) + sestet; volta near line 9	Problem, then response
Shakespearean sonnet	Three quatrains + couplet (abab cdcd efef gg)	Argument, then a closing twist
Quatrain stanzas	Four-line units, often abab or abcb	Steady, song-like progress
Blank verse	Unrhymed iambic pentameter	Speech-like, flexible thought
Free verse	No fixed metre or rhyme	Line breaks carry emphasis

Must-know distinctions

• Speaker vs poet. Rossetti’s “Remember” (1862) is spoken by someone imagining her own death. Write “the speaker”.
• Form vs structure. Form is the shape (sonnet, quatrains). Structure is the movement (where it turns, what repeats, how it ends).
• Metre vs rhythm. Metre is the regular pattern. Rhythm is how the lines actually move, including departures from the pattern.
• Enjambment vs caesura. Enjambment breaks the line but not the sentence. Caesura breaks the sentence but not the line.
• Metaphor vs symbol. A metaphor makes an explicit transfer (“mind-forged manacles”). A symbol is a literal thing in the poem that also points beyond itself.
• Alliteration vs assonance. Consonant at the start of words vs vowel sounds anywhere.
• Tone vs mood. Tone belongs to the speaker. Mood is the atmosphere the reader feels.

Method in steps: reading an unseen poem

1  Read twice. Write one sentence: what is the poem about?
2  Voice: who speaks, to whom, in what tone?
3  Find the turn. What changes, and at which line?
4  Form: count lines and stanzas; mark the rhyme scheme.
5  Scan two or three key lines; note any break in the pattern.
6  Circle the strongest images and sound patterns near the turn.
7  Choose 2-3 features that best explain the change in step 3.

Method in steps: the analytical paragraph

Claim      -> answers the question in one sentence
Evidence   -> short quotation, embedded in your sentence
Technique  -> precise name of the method
Effect     -> what it does to meaning or to the reader
Link       -> back to the question and the whole poem

Worked reminder: scansion, rhyme and pauses

The kettle clicks. The house is holding still. Upstairs, a door; below, the clock’s dry tick. You said you’d ring by six. The window-sill collects the dark, and every sound is quick.

Original text written for Marlbridge.

• Metre: each line has ten syllables in a da-DUM pattern: iambic pentameter. the KET-tle CLICKS. the HOUSE is HOLD-ing STILL
• Rhyme: still/sill and tick/quick, so the scheme is abab.
• Caesura: full stops inside lines 1 and 3 break the regular metre into short, tense units. The speaker is listening, and the pauses make you listen too.
• Voice: “You said you’d ring by six” reveals an addressee and a promise. The quatrain is about waiting for a call that has not come.
• Imagery: “The window-sill / collects the dark” is personification, carried over the line break by enjambment. The dark seems to gather slowly, like the speaker’s worry.
• Link: the steady iambic beat mirrors the ticking clock, while the caesuras show the tension underneath the calm.

Worked reminder: sound tied to meaning

Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty” (written 1877, first published 1918) praises “dappled things”: things marked with contrast. The paired opposites “swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim” place contrasting words side by side, split by commas and semicolons. The sound and punctuation enact the idea: variety itself is the beauty. That link, from sound to idea, is the whole point of noting sound.

Worked reminder: weak vs strong analysis

Blake’s “London” (Songs of Experience, 1794; modernised spelling) gives a clear contrast.

• Weak: “Blake uses repetition in ‘In every cry of every man’. This makes the poem more effective.” The device is named, but the effect is generic and could fit any poem.
• Better: “The anaphora of ‘In every’ stretches the suffering across the whole city.” The effect is specific, but it stops short of meaning.
• Strong: “The anaphora of ‘In every’ refuses to single anyone out: man, infant and voice are swept into one pattern, so misery becomes the city’s normal condition rather than a private misfortune. The metaphor ‘mind-forged manacles’ then names the cause as thought and habit, not iron.”

The strong version keeps the quotations short and embedded, names the technique precisely, and moves from effect to an idea about the whole poem. That last step is what turns spotting into analysis.

Quick self-test

1. How many lines are in the sestet of a Petrarchan sonnet?
2. How many syllables are there in a regular line of iambic tetrameter?
3. Give the rhyme scheme of the original quatrain above.
4. In line 1 of the quatrain, where is the caesura?
5. Name the device in “The window-sill / collects the dark”.
6. At which line does the volta of Rossetti’s “Remember” fall, and which word signals it?
7. What is the difference between enjambment and caesura?
8. Name the sound device in “fickle, freckled”.
9. Why should you write “the speaker” rather than “the poet”?
10. Give the stress pattern of a trochee.
11. What is the difference between form and structure?
12. Hopkins called his own rhythm by what name?

Answers

1. Six.
2. Eight (four iambs).
3. abab.
4. After “clicks.” (the full stop splits the line).
5. Personification (with enjambment carrying it across the line break).
6. Line 9, signalled by “Yet”.
7. Enjambment runs the sentence over the line break; caesura is a pause within the line.
8. Alliteration (repeated “f” at the start of both words).
9. The voice in the poem may be a persona or imagined situation, so it cannot be assumed to be the poet.
10. Stressed then unstressed (DUM-da).
11. Form is the poem’s shape (type, stanza, rhyme scheme); structure is how it moves and turns.
12. Sprung rhythm.

Where marks are usually lost

• Spotting a feature and naming it without saying what it does to meaning.
• Claiming a metre from the look of a line instead of counting syllables and marking stresses.
• Saying a rhyme scheme is “regular” without giving the letters or asking why it breaks.
• Writing “enjambment creates flow” instead of explaining what the delayed word adds.
• Missing the volta, so the answer treats the poem as one unchanging mood.
• Dropping quotations in as separate sentences rather than embedding short phrases.
• Retelling the poem stanza by stanza with no controlling claim.
• Offering one fixed meaning for a symbol when the poem supports more than one reading.
• Ignoring the addressee: a hidden “you” often changes the tone of the whole poem.
• Using vague effect words (“interesting”, “powerful”, “engages the reader”) with nothing specific behind them.

Keep going

• Full teaching and a model paragraph: poetry study guide.
• Exam-style questions: poetry practice questions.
• Assessment components: assessment revision notes.
• Connecting texts: intertextuality revision notes.

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Diploma Programme Subject Brief, Language A: literature, first assessments for SL and HL 2021 (2019).