GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Contexts of American Poetry
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Example Questions
Example Question #1 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
Which of the following American poets is not known for work that decried the Vietnam War?
Allen Ginsberg
Hart Crane
Yusef Komunyakaa
Robert Bly
Grace Paley
Hart Crane
Of these writers, only Hart Crane was not alive during the Vietnam War. He died in 1932, and the other poets on the list all protested the war in various ways. Some did so through membership in the American Writers Against the Vietnam War (of which Bly was a founder).
Example Question #2 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
The author of the poems “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” (taken from her collection Ariel) was married to which British poet?
Ezra Pound
T. S. Eliot
W. B. Yeats
Ted Hughes
W. H. Auden
Ted Hughes
The author of the poems in question is Sylvia Plath. She was married to British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes from 1956 until 1963, when she committed suicide. Her work is known for its preoccupation with mental illness and the mundane details of daily life.
Example Question #111 : Cultural And Historical Contexts
Which of the following twentieth-century American poets did not frequently embrace untraditional forms or linguistic devices?
William Carlos Williams
e e cummings
John Ashbery
Hart Crane
Gertrude Stein
Hart Crane
By process of elimination, we can rule out all the poets with experimental aspects to their work. William Carlos Williams embraced innovated forms, e e cummings eschewed traditional orthography, Gertrude Stein focused on sonic pattern to the near-exclusion of semantic meaningfulness, and John Ashbery employed avant-garde forms and syntax. This leaves Hart Crane, who embraced some aspects of Modernist poetry but typically followed the older tradition of lyric verse in his work.
Example Question #112 : Cultural And Historical Contexts
Which African-American poet read work at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration?
Gwendolyn Brooks
Zora Neale Hurston
Rita Dove
Amiri Baraka
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou
This is Maya Angelou, the famous author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She read “On the Pulse of Morning” at Clinton’s 1993 inauguration ceremony.
Example Question #3 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
Which of the following twentieth-century poets has not been a United States Poet Laureate?
Charles Bukowski
Rita Dove
Natasha Trethewey
Joseph Brodsky
Philip Levine
Charles Bukowski
The only poet on this list who has not been the national Poet Laureate is Bukowski. Levine was Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2012, Trethewey was Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014, Dove was Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995, and Brodsky was Poet Laureate from 1991 to 1992.
Example Question #4 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
Which of the following poets could not be described as a nature poet?
Robert Frost
Gary Snyder
Louise Glück
Allen Ginsberg
Robert Hass
Allen Ginsberg
Of these five, only Ginsberg does not write work that is routinely and overtly concerned with the natural world, environment, and ecology.
Example Question #11 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
Which of the following poets is not considered a founding member of Confessional poetry?
Anne Sexton
John Berryman
Robert Lowell
Sylvia Plath
Hilda Doolittle
Hilda Doolittle
Confessionalism, a poetic movement that focuses on individual, often intensely personal, experiences, typically examines issues of psychology, identity, mental illness, sexuality, and cultural taboos. Berryman, Lowell, Plath, and Sexton are all important Confessionalist poets, but Hilda Doolittle (often referred to as “H.D.”) is an Imagist poet.
Example Question #12 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
Which of the following poets would not be considered an early or proto-Modernist?
Edgar Allan Poe
Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson
Arthur Rimbaud
Robert Frost
Edgar Allan Poe
Each of the following poets anticipated Modernism with their work: Emily Dickinson, with her experimental punctuation and brevity; Walt Whitman, with his revolutionary portrayals of identity and sexuality and his eschewal of strict meter; Robert Frost, with his clear, precise language and his crisp imagery; and Arthur Rimbaud, for his refusal to romanticize and his use of prose poetry. Poe, however, was a Gothic writer and not a proto-Modernist.
Example Question #13 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
During what decade was Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth published?
1980s
1990s
1970s
1960s
2000s
2000s
Given that this is Adrienne Rich’s penultimate poetry collection, it makes sense that it would have been published near the end of Rich’s life (1929-2012). Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth was published in 2007.
Example Question #114 : Contexts Of Poetry
When was Meditations in an Emergency published?
1960s
1940s
1950s
1920s
1930s
1950s
This collection was first published in 1957.
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