A useful starting point when facing unseen poetry is to find the moment when the poem ‘turns’ — where there is a significant break in the argument, tone or mood. In sonnets, this moment is called the volta (from the Italian for ‘turn’), but the concept can be applied to most poems. Once you have identified this turning point, you are well on your way to a perceptive response.
The turning point might be signalled by a change of stanza and rhyming pattern, or you might find the volta marking the final couplet in a Shakespearean sonnet, or before the sestet, immediately after the octave, in a Petrarchan sonnet. A turning point might be marked by a verbal shift, as in conversation when a ‘but’ or ‘yet’ signals a disagreement or a new thought. The way in which you analyse a Shakespeare extract from your set play might help you here. Just as you look or listen for a turning point in a scene — when one character gains or concedes power, or an entrance changes the mood — so poems often have their own tipping point. More generally, reading poems aloud helps to familiarise you with the process of noticing the shift, either by hearing a change of rhythm or rhyme or by listening out for the tonal shift, as in music when it changes from a major to a minor key.
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