Commentary Samples from Exam 1, May 2001
Higher Level
Stephen Edgar’s “The Secret Life of Books” is about the nature of
reading and the power of literature to affect the reader. The poem
personifies books, imagining how they silently plot to draw in their readers, and then moves to a
discussion of how the readers are changed by their reading. Edgar structures his poem to illustrate
the nature of this relationship between literature and its readers.
“The Secret Life of Books” is divided into five stanzas, each six lines in length. A lyric poem,
it is a brief commentary revealing the speaker’s emotions on its topic. Within such a brief length,
Edgar has developed a specific structure to each stanza. Of the six lines in a stanza, the first is long
(10-12 syllables), the second is short (3-5 syllables), the third and fourth are long, the fifth is short,
and the sixth is long. The second and sixth lines of each stanza rhyme, or come close to rhyming, as
do the third and fifth. This structure is consistent throughout the entire length of the poem.
The first stanza introduces the idea of books’ after-hours scheming, and describes how they
influence the outside world: “they do their work through others/ . . .by the twisting of heart.” The
stanza is consistent in voice and character. Each sentence has “they” referring to books as its
subject: “They have... They know… they do their work... They have turned the world.” However,
the stanza also employs a contradiction to illustrate its theme. On the one hand, the dominant image
of books in the stanza is that produced by the simile in lines 3 and 4: “Like invalids long reconciled
/To stillness.” Books are incapable of movement and seemingly inactive: “they can’t move.” On the
other hand, the stanza describes their effects using language which suggests movement: “They have
turned the world/ By the twisting of hearts.” This contrast between images of stasis and kinesis
emphasizes the paradox of the poem’s theme: how can inanimate objects produce change?
The next stanza directly raises this question: “What do they have to say and how do they say
it?” How can a book speak? This question is not answered directly. Instead it introduces whimsical
images of books plotting in “the library/ At night or the sun room.” The stanza also introduces the
use of the second person: “something is going on,/ You may suspect...” For the first time in the
poem interplay exists between “they” (the books) and “you” (the reader). However, such
interaction is only mental-suspicion. The reader has not yet opened the book and begun to read. The
stanza is mainly preparatory - it describes the setting (library or sun room), introduces a second
character, and, most importantly, creates tension in the poem by bringing up an unanswered
question. This quality of unfinishedness is emphasized by Edgar’s use of an incomplete sentence at
the end of the stanza. Completion, he suggests, will come later.
The third stanza begins by completing the sentence that ended the previous stanza: “Yet they/
Need you.” The use of “Need” to begin the stanza establishes its dominant idea, that a book needs a
reader to become complete. In this, the central stanza of the poem, the reader (“you”) picks up one
of “them” and begins to read. Another question is raised: “Why this one?” The answer has been
provided by the previous two stanzas’ set-up: the books’ “stratagems” have drawn you in. The
stanza contains images of “determinism, the selfish gene,” alluding to science as an attempt to
answer our questions. But the author seems to disagree that a “selfish” or other gene causes our
choice of reading matter; he prefers his capricious idea of books’ secret midnight strategy sessions.
Literature itself is what draws the reader in and it is addictive: “already the blurb/ is drawing in/
Some further text.” To demonstrate this, Edgar again leaves his final sentence of the stanza
unfinished, showing how one word leads to the next.
The fourth stanza continues the idea of one book leading to another, an “atlas or gazetteer,” for
example, to look up unfamiliar place-names. But in the fourth stanza Edgar moves on from the idea
of addictive reading and begins to answer the question posed in stanza two: how do books speak?
From IB training materials, Riga, Latvia, summer 2002
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The answer he provides is that they use the reader, by prompting discussion or provoking thought.
In a poem “spare/As a dead leaf’s skeleton,” the reader must provide the words that the author left
out. Edgar uses the metaphor of relations between the sexes to describe his idea of how a poem or
other work of literature speaks. A piece of literature provides us with a script, but just as “lovers
never hear” the script passed “through the sexes,” the reader may never realize that his ideas stem
from a book he has read.
This idea is developed further in the final stanza, bringing the poem to its conclusion. When
the reader comes “to think, to tell, to do,” he ends up not thinking in an original manner, but
becomes a model of what he has read. “In the end they have written you”; their thoughts become
yours. Structurally, this stanza connects to the first stanza. It is self-contained, neither beginning
nor ending with part of a sentence. In addition, the phrasing of the first line, “They have you,”
echoes the poem’s opening: “They have their stratagems too.” What exactly are the books plotting?
The parallel structure at the poem’s end resolves this question. They were plotting to have their
ideas become part of us.
The title of the poem is extremely significant. It is the only time in the poem that the word
“books” is used, and thus the readers’ only clue to the identity of “they” used over and over in the
poem. The phrase “secret life” carries the connotation of glamorous and exciting dual identities,
lending the poem a touch of whimsy. It echoes sensationalist tabloid headlines, leading the reader
to suspect exciting and surreptitious goings-on in the library at midnight.
Any poem that describes literature to such an extent as this one lends itself to being read as
self-referential. In this case, the author seems to be acutely aware that this poem will be analyzed,
and some of his lines suggest that he is directly speaking to the analyzer. The question: “What do
they have to say and how do they say it?” is a classic prompt when analyzing a poem or other piece
of literature. The irony in this poem is that, like the books it describes, it will become part of its
readers’ mind; it will write us, so to speak. The inherent irony within the poem makes Edgar’s use
of a light tone appropriate; were he to write an extremely serious piece on this topic, it would seem
that he had failed to understand that his own work was part of the process he describes, instead, he
is fully aware that the quotation marks we are caught between may be his own.
Although “The Secret Life of Books” has a light, or whimsical tone, it provides serious insight
into the relationship between author and reader. Just as a composer needs musicians for his art to
come to life, an author needs readers, or his work has no more worth than lines on a page. At the
same time that the author needs the reader, the reader needs literature, needs the ideas it contains
for they help him to form opinions and expose him to new ideas. We are what we read, Edgar
suggests, but this is not necessarily a bad thing; this transformation must occur for authors to turn
the world.
Commentary Marks from Exam 1, May 2001
Higher Level
This is an example of an excellent commentary. The first paragraph gives a concise
introduction to the main ideas in the poem and relates the ideas to the structure of the poem. After
an analysis of line lengths, which is accurate but not enlightening, the candidate proceeds to discuss
the poem stanza by stanza. This works for this poem because of its logical progression which the
candidate clearly understands. He does not always use the correct terms but, more importantly he
can discuss effects, as he does for the enjambment between stanzas 2 and 3, and 3 and 4. He has an
excellent understanding of voice, does not avoid the difficult metaphors (see comments on “dead
leaf’s skeleton”) but refrains from translating the obvious. The candidate was one of the few who
realized that the poem was humorous. There are plenty of detailed references to the text and the
language is correct and usually concise. Score: 55555 for a total of 25.
From IB training materials, Riga, Latvia, summer 2002
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