A Government Driver on His Retirement is a poem of thirty-three lines divided into _______ stanzas.

Analyze the question: This is a factual question on poetic structure. It asks how many stanzas make up the 33 lines of "A Government Driver on His Retirement", a poem in the JAMB Literature in English poetry list.

Concept: Stanza count is a basic part of poetry analysis. Students should know the form of each prescribed poem: number of lines, number of stanzas, and whether the stanzas are regular or irregular.

Working:

• The poem has 33 lines.
• 33 doesn't split evenly into four or five stanzas, so those options would need very uneven stanza lengths.
• Three stanzas would mean 11 lines each. That is possible, but it is a very long stanza for this kind of free-verse poem.
• Six stanzas of varying lengths (for example, a mix of 5- and 6-line stanzas) fits a free-verse poem about a driver's career and retirement, where each stanza covers a stage of his working life.

I can't reproduce the exact line-by-line layout of the poem from memory, so I can't independently confirm the stanza count. Check the printed text of the poem in your prescribed anthology to confirm.

Answer: The poem has six stanzas, which is option A.

Exam tip: For every prescribed poem, note the number of lines, the number of stanzas, the rhyme scheme (or lack of one), and the theme. Questions on structure like this one are easy marks if you have counted the stanzas beforehand.