The study guide
The sixteen poems
Each guide takes one poem apart the way examiners reward: what it is doing, the methods that matter (form and structure first, they are the most forgotten), key quotations with line references, and the poems it compares with best.
If–
Advice from father to son: the impossible checklist for being a man.
Compare with: Poem at Thirty-Nine · Prayer Before Birth
No. 2 · Louis MacNeicePrayer Before Birth
An unborn child pleads for protection from the world awaiting it.
Compare with: Hide and Seek · Half-caste · Remember
No. 3 · Imtiaz DharkerBlessing
A burst pipe turns water into treasure, and a slum into celebration.
Compare with: War Photographer · Half-past Two
No. 4 · Sujata BhattSearch for My Tongue
Losing a mother tongue, and the dream in which it grows back.
Compare with: Half-caste · Piano
No. 5 · U. A. FanthorpeHalf-past Two
A small boy in detention slips outside clock time altogether.
Compare with: Piano · Hide and Seek · Blessing
No. 6 · D. H. LawrencePiano
A song drags a grown man back to childhood, against his will.
Compare with: Half-past Two · Poem at Thirty-Nine
No. 7 · Vernon ScannellHide and Seek
A childhood game sours into a lesson about being left behind.
Compare with: Half-past Two · Prayer Before Birth
No. 8 · William ShakespeareSonnet 116
A definition of love that will not bend, alter or remove.
Compare with: La Belle Dame sans Merci · My Last Duchess
No. 9 · John KeatsLa Belle Dame sans Merci
A knight enchanted, abandoned and left loitering, palely, forever.
Compare with: Sonnet 116 · My Last Duchess · The Tyger
No. 10 · Alice WalkerPoem at Thirty-Nine
A daughter misses her father, and becomes him at the stove.
Compare with: If– · Piano · Do not go gentle
No. 11 · Carol Ann DuffyWar Photographer
In a darkroom, suffering develops into Sunday-supplement pictures.
Compare with: Blessing · My Last Duchess · Half-past Two
No. 12 · William BlakeThe Tyger
Questions hammered at a creator who could frame such fearful symmetry.
Compare with: La Belle Dame sans Merci · My Last Duchess
No. 13 · Robert BrowningMy Last Duchess
A duke shows off a portrait, and accidentally confesses to everything.
Compare with: The Tyger · La Belle Dame sans Merci · Sonnet 116
No. 14 · John AgardHalf-caste
A slur dismantled with wit, Picasso, and half of one leg.
Compare with: Search for My Tongue · Prayer Before Birth
No. 15 · Dylan ThomasDo not go gentle into that good night
A son begging his father to fight death with rage.
Compare with: Remember · Poem at Thirty-Nine
No. 16 · Christina RossettiRemember
A farewell that ends by choosing the beloved’s happiness over memory.
Compare with: Do not go gentle · Prayer Before Birth
Read the poem first, always
These guides work alongside the Anthology, not instead of it. Poems in copyright are quoted here only in short phrases, and in the exam the full poems are printed with the paper, so your job is not memory: it is knowing each poem well enough to find the right lines fast and say something sharp about how they work.