Card 0 of 380
Nobel Prize-winning Mexican poet Octavio Paz wrote which of the following works?
Only The Labyrinth of Solitude is by Octavio Paz. The other works are all novels by Mexican writer Gabriel Garcia Márquez.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
The author of the poem "We Real Cool" is __________.
The poem is by Gwendolyn Brooks, who was the first African American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize. Brooks experimented with poetic form throughout her career, but her poetry is often concerned with the urban poor of the area of Chicago in which she lived for much of her life. This poem is a favorite of the Lit GRE's and it is extremely short, so you should make it a point to be able to recognize it on first sight.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Which American poet was known for a playful use of language, a lack of standard orthography, a latent transcendentalism, and titles such as “i carry your heart with me (i carry it in” and “anyone lived in a pretty how town”?
The poet described is Edward Estlin Cummings, usually known as e. e. cummings. In addition to his poetry, Cummings was known for his paintings, plays, novels and essays.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Which Nobel Prize-winning Caribbean poet wrote Omeros, a contemporary Caribbean epic poem that loosely reimagines Homer’s Iliad?
This is the St. Lucian poet Derek Walcott, an important post-colonial writer. Omeros was published in 1990 and contains characters with mythical names such as Achille, Hector, and Helen, although the work itself is set primarily in modern-day St. Lucia.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Peruvian poet César Vallejo wrote which of the following works?
Only Los Heraldos Negros is by Vallejo. The rest are works by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Which Latin American poet wrote the collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair?
This is Pablo Neruda. He employed a variety of poetic forms, including love poetry, epics, historical works, autobiography and political manifestos.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Which Caribbean poet wrote the seminal book-length poem Notebook of a Return to the Native Land?
This is the Martinican writer Aimé Césaire, an important founder of négritude in French-language literature. Césaire’s work also includes plays such as A Tempest (based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest) and critical essays such as Discourse on Colonialism. Notebook of a Return to the Native Land was first published in 1939 in France.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
This American poet was heralded as the leader of the Beats and had his epic poem “Howl” subjected to an obscenity trial in the 1950s.
The poet in question is Allen Ginsberg, a leading figure in the counterculture movement. His most famous work, “Howl,” gave voice to previously unheard minorities and spoke against war, materialism, consumerism, homophobia, and various forms of repression. Its opening lines are frequently quoted, although “Howl” was often censored because of its depictions of homosexual and heterosexual sex acts.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
This poet was known for her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar as well as her collection of poetry, Ariel. Some of her best-known poems include “Daddy,” “Lady Lazarus,” and “Mad Girl’s Love Song.” Who is she?
The poet is Sylvia Plath, wife of the British poet Ted Hughes and an important figure in the genre of confessional poetry. Plath’s work is marked by body- and nature-based imagery, depictions of mental illness, and seemingly mundane details from everyday life.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Who is the author of the postmodernist poetry collection The Dream Songs?
John Berryman, a leading confessional and postmodern poet, is best known for the collection The Dream Songs, a compilation of his two books 77 Dream Songs and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest. The work, which won the Pulitzer Prize, features a semi-autobiographical and identity-shifting character named Henry as well as a sometimes controversial appropriation of black language.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Which British poet began a poem with “April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing” and that also included such lines as “I will show you fear in a handful of dust”?
The poem, T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” is often cited as one of the most important literary works of the twentieth century. It is a polyphonic conglomeration of Arthurian legend, classical myth, modern social satire, and religious vision, and it discusses themes of disillusionment, despondency, death, and mortal judgment.
"April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing": Adapted from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, l.1-2 (1922)
"I will show you fear in a handful of dust": Adapted from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, l.30 (1922)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
What is contemporary Japanese poetry called?
All of these terms except “gendai-shi” refer to older, more traditional forms of Japanese poetry.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Which of the following works is by Russian poet Osip Mandelstam?
“The Lady with the Dog” is by Anton Chekhov, “The Overcoat” is by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Notes from the Underground is by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Pale Fire is by Vladimir Nabokov.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Which Latin American poet wrote odes to age, ironing, socks, tomatoes, and birdwatching?
This is the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Which Nobel Prize-winning Eastern European poet wrote Elegy for John Donne and Other Poems, On Grief and Reason, and To Urania?
This is the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, who was forced to emigrate from the Soviet Union to the United States in the 1970s. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987 and was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States in 1991.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
The Jamaican poet Jean “Binta” Breeze wrote all of the following except which collection of poetry?
Sea Grapes is a 1976 poetry collection by Derek Walcott.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
Some hidden Spirit shall inquire thy Fate,
Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the Peep of Dawn
Brushing with hasty Steps the Dews away
To meet the Sun upon the upland Lawn.
There at the Foot of yonder nodding Beech
That wreathes its old fantastic Roots so high,
His listless Length at Noontide wou'd he stretch,
And pore upon the Brook that babbles by."
Which of the following poems could not be described as a reaction to this work?
All of the poems are arguably inspired by or draw elements from Gray’s poem except for John Donne’s famous sonnet, which was published in 1633.
Passage adapted from "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray, ln.95-104 (1751)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
This post-war English poet and librarian was known for his obscenity and frank examination of modern life in poems such as “This Be the Verse,” “The Life with a Hole in It” and “Aubade.”
The poet described is Philip Larkin, who was born in Coventry in 1922. His poetry is distinguished by a cynical, forthright treatment of romance, children, sexuality, politics, and daily life.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Britain’s current (2015) Poet Laureate has published volumes including Standing Female Nude, Fleshweathercock and Other Poems, and The World’s Wife, the latter of which refigures classically male-centric myths and fairy tales to focus on the female characters. Who is she?
Britain’s current (2015) Poet Laureate is Carol Ann Duffy, a writer whose work is often rooted in fantasy, fairy tales, and feminism.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
The form of the poem is that of __________.
The poem is an example of a curtal sonnet, which consists of 3/4 the number of lines in a standard Petrarchan sonnet. This form was developed by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It is worth knowing, but it is a somewhat obscure form, so the best approach is to use process of elimination. You absolutely have to know that the Spenserian sonnet and the Elizabethan sonnet are each 14 lines, so you can rule those out right away. You also need to know that the villanelle is a 19 line form in which the first and third lines function as refrains that repeat throughout the poem. The roundel is more obscure, but it is also features a refrain at the end of every other three-line stanza.
Passage adapted from "Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)
Compare your answer with the correct one above