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"