Poetry - Test 4

C2 Proficiency · Multiple Matching · Cambridge English Proficiency 1, Cambridge University Press

You are going to read a newspaper article about poetry. For questions 1–10, choose from the sections (A–D). The sections may be chosen more than once.

One of the most satisfying things about words is their black and whiteness, the neat, austere simplicity of their process. Letters on a page are so direct and literal; you read a sentence and you can trace the thought. You know how it's done – just so long as it's prose. With poetry, however, the rules don't apply. On the face of it, it looks the same; the letters, the words, are familiar. But by some internal magic, poetry hovers above the page. It happens outside the black and white lines. Poetry is in essence a mysterious art. Poems are coded messages for your eyes only, left under pillows, tied to roses, written in water. There are no regular poetry reviews in cultural magazines, or poetry programmes on the telly. I expect Seamus Heaney and Wendy Cope could stroll hand in hand through most bookshops unmolested. Poems sell few and far, for little or less. But this reticence belies the truth of verse. Even if we haven't read a new poem for a decade, still there are verses that are the most dear cultural amulets we own, hidden in the dead letterboxes of our hearts. Snatches of verse, we take them to our end.

I write about 1,500 words every day. I handle them with respect and pleasure, for they are the tools of my trade. I reckon I can make a craftsman-like job of most wordy things, from a shopping list to a eulogy. But I have no idea, not the faintest inkling, of how a poem is made, and not for want of trying. Of course, I've tried. I've chopped the lines out, I've counted the syllables and made similes and metaphors, but it's barely poetry. It remains resolutely page-bound: prosaic, poetish pastiche. The hardest thing after writing poetry is writing about poetry, as you must already have noticed. It makes the author sound either pretentiously airy-fairy or thuggishly indifferent. For a start, nobody has really even satisfactorily defined what poetry is. Have a look in any dictionary, and you'll see what I mean. The word 'poet' got its first recorded use in English in the 14th century. It came from the Ancient Greek for 'the maker'. People have written books defining what poetry is and isn't, but they can only tell you the mechanics. I asked an editor what poetry was. She said, 'It's that which can't be edited.'

You know poetry the moment you see it; the first line tells you. Yet it has no rules. It can rhyme or not. It can have as many rhythms as a Brazilian ballroom, lines of any length, as much or as little punctuation as it feels like. But poetry can also be as rigorous as mathematics. It exists outside grammar and formula, and yet it can tie itself up in manners and etiquette. It can have any number of subtly different meanings; indeed, it can have no logical meaning at all, yet still be beautiful and touching and disturbing. A woman once wrote to Dylan Thomas saying that she loved his poetry, but was worried that her understanding of it was not what he'd intended. Thomas replied that a poem was like a city: it had many entrances.

I have yet to hear a convincing explanation of where poetry comes from and how it arrives, but I do know it is the highest calling of a sensitive and cerebral existence. Poetry, along with dancing and drumming is probably the most ancient of all our arts. There was rhythm and rhyme before written language. Poems lit up the memory of our collective past, told us who we were and where we came from, and they still do. People who never read poetry still reach for it at the precipitous points of their existence. At times of great happiness or terrible sadness, those places where prose is leaden with its own wordiness, only poetry will do. And there is poetry for every occasion. In my life we have had a particularly rich period of poets: Auden, Graves, Larkin, Thomas, Betjeman, to name but five. They have written between the lines on every facet of our lives, from sport to table manners. The poetry of our times is a fairer record of our concerns and hopes and our collective life than film or television or painting.

Poetry

The writer AA Gill reflects on the nature of poetry

the possibility of a poem following certain conventions?

poetry which sounds like prose?

particular lines of poems being precious to most people?

poetry being instantly recognisable?

evidence that poetry has long been seen as a creative act?

poetry being the ultimate expression of an intellectual mind?

professional respect for the integrity of poetry?

the possibility of poetry dealing with everyday matters?

poetry's relative lack of exposure?

poetry that relies for its effectiveness purely on its emotional resonance?

In which section does the writer mention

Available as a free printable PDF worksheet with an optional answer key.

More C2 Proficiency Multiple Matching practice · All C2 Proficiency practice