Practice Approaches with Example Poems

The skills developed in this course — reading, annotating, analysing, comparing — only become reliable through practice. This lesson provides worked examples showing how to approach two unseen poems on the theme of love, demonstrating the analytical process from first reading to finished paragraphs.

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The Poems

For this lesson, we will work with two imagined poems on the subject of love. In your exam, you will of course work with real poems, but the analytical process is identical.

Poem A: "What I Cannot Say"

I bring you apples from the tree you planted years before we met — their skins still warm from afternoon, their sweetness something like regret.

I lay them on the kitchen table in a line, from green to red, and wait for you to see the colours darkening, as nothing's said.

This is the way I love you: in apples and in silence, in things I place before you that carry what my mouth cannot.

Poem B: "Love Poem with No Metaphor"

I don't want to say your eyes are anything other than your eyes. I don't want to claim the moon does something to the sea that resembles what you do to me.

I've had enough of roses, stars, and storms. Love is not a journey or a war. You are not a harbour and I'm not a ship and none of this is metaphor

except it is, of course. I can't say love without the word becoming slippery, without it turning into something else — a fruit, a season, a disease, a key.

So here: I love you. In plain words. Even as they fail, they're all I've got.

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First Reading: Initial Observations

After a first reading of both poems, note your immediate impressions:

Poem A

Observation	Detail
Subject	A speaker brings apples to a loved one
Tone	Quiet, tender, slightly melancholy
Key tension	The speaker cannot say what they feel; the apples are a substitute for words
Form	Regular quatrains, roughly metrical; creates a sense of restraint and order

Poem B

Observation	Detail
Subject	A speaker tries to express love without using metaphor
Tone	Self-aware, slightly frustrated, ultimately tender
Key tension	The impossibility of speaking about love in "plain words"
Form	Quatrains but less regular; conversational; the form reflects the speaker's attempt at directness

Initial Comparative Observations

Both poems are about the difficulty of expressing love. Both acknowledge that love exceeds the capacity of language. But they approach this shared theme differently:

• Poem A responds to the inadequacy of language by finding a non-verbal substitute — the apples, the silence, the arrangement of colours
• Poem B confronts the problem head-on, attempting to strip language of metaphor, only to discover that metaphor is inescapable

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Second Reading: Annotation and Analysis

Poem A: Detailed Observations

Line/Phrase	Analysis
"I bring you apples from the tree / you planted years before we met"	The tree predates the relationship — it belongs to the beloved's past, not to the couple's shared history. The act of bringing apples from their tree is an act of entering that history, of making a connection across time
"their skins still warm from afternoon"	Sensuous, tactile detail — the warmth of the apples is almost bodily. "Still warm" suggests something recently alive, recently touched by the sun. The warmth is a form of tenderness
"their sweetness something like regret"	A startling conjunction: sweetness and regret. The simile "something like" is deliberately imprecise — the speaker cannot quite name what the apples taste of. This is the first hint that the poem is about the limits of expression
"in a line, from green to red"	The arrangement is deliberate, careful, even ritualistic. The colour spectrum from green (unripe, new) to red (ripe, mature) might suggest the arc of the relationship itself
"darkening, as nothing's said"	The colours darken — the apples are changing even as they sit on the table, subtly decaying. "As nothing's said" links the silence between the couple with this darkening. The silence is not peaceful but charged
"in apples and in silence"	The final stanza makes explicit what has been implied: the speaker loves in actions and objects, not in words. The "in" is repeated, creating a list that is also a definition — this is what love looks like when it cannot speak
"that carry what my mouth cannot"	The final line is devastating in its simplicity. "My mouth" is strikingly physical — not "I" but "my mouth," as if the organ of speech itself is the problem. The things the speaker places before the beloved are bearers, carriers — they transport what cannot be said

Poem B: Detailed Observations