Reading a new poem

Section C of Literature Paper 2 gives you two poems you have never seen before. There are two questions:

• 27.1: write about one poem: 24 marks, about 30 minutes.
• 27.2: compare the methods in the two poems: 8 marks, about 15 minutes.

You can't revise the poems, but you can practise a method that works on any poem, so you are never stuck.

Read the poem twice, then ask five questions:

1. The title: what does it suggest before you even start?
2. The speaker: who is talking, and to whom?
3. The situation: what is happening, or being remembered?
4. The shift: where does the poem change, in mood, time or argument? Look for words like ‘but’, ‘yet’ or ‘now’.
5. The ending: how does it finish, and how has the speaker's feeling changed?

Jot one or two words for each in the margin. That gives you the poem's shape before you analyse details.

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

5Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you planned:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

10And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

1. Title: a command: the speaker wants to be remembered.
2. Speaker: someone dying, talking to the person she loves.
3. Situation: she imagines being ‘Gone far away into the silent land’, a gentle way of saying death.
4. Shift: line 9 begins ‘Yet’. She changes her mind.
5. Ending: she would rather they ‘forget and smile / Than that you should remember and be sad’. Love means letting go.

Now read the question carefully and underline its key words, such as ‘how does the poet present feelings about death?’.

Go back through the poem and mark three or four methods that answer the question: a word, an image, the form, a shift. These become your paragraphs.