Poetry

Poetry is language charged with meaning: sound, image and form do work that paraphrase cannot. The exam tests your command of forms and devices, not your feelings about a poem. Example: a Shakespearean sonnet is 14 lines in three quatrains plus a closing couplet, usually in iambic pentameter, and the couplet often turns or clinches the argument — the volta, or turn, may fall at line 9 or at the couplet.