Analysing poems in GAMSAT: Literary Terms (Introduction)
Most students sitting for GAMSAT go weak in the knees with the mere thought of analyzing poems in Section I of the test. You are no Keats. You may not even have even a single poetic nerve in your entire system. And yet you may end up answering each of the poem-based MCQs correctly. GAMSAT will test your comprehension and reasoning skills. In layman’s tongue, how well do you read and understand poetry? If you are not a man (or woman!) of literature, do not despair. If codes are more your language, hey… you are in luck. Poetry is the language of codes. Break them and you have scored in the poetry sections of the paper!
In this series on how to analyse poems, we will be discussing a bunch of literary terms that you often bump into without recognizing them while reading a poem. What exactly is a literary term? First the dictionary definition: “Literary terms” refer to the words themselves with which we identify and designate literary elements and techniques.* Personification, hyperbole, simile, metaphor, symbol, exaggeration are all literary devices that are employed by authors and poets. You may be already familiar with a few of them. We will discuss each of them in detail and observe how they make a poem.
Literary terms are the little hidden treasures which a poet expects the reader to discover on his own while reading his or her poem. Once you know what each one is, you will begin to recognize and pinpoint them in a piece of poetry. These are the codes that illustrate the motifs used in the poem. Understanding them will lead to a clear understanding of the poem.
Buying a basic beginner’s guide to understanding literary terms would be a good investment. M.H. Abrams‘ Glossary of Literary Terms is a comprehensive guide to each of the literary terms with easy to understand explanations and illustrative examples. Buy a new one or get hold of a second hand copy. Most students of literature already possess one. It will be a handy book to have while learning how to analyse poems.
There is no limit to the ways in which you may analyse a poem. It is like looking at a painting or sculpture in an art gallery. Each onlooker has his own set of interpretations. There are indeed a million different ways of looking at a thing and a piece of poetry is no different. In the first part of this series, we will deal with ‘personification’ in poetry.
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