For AP Literature & Composition

Reading 1

for AP Literature & Composition

From Cliff’s Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition Preparation Guide by Allan Casson
SECfiON I: MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS 37

ANSWERING MULTIPLE-CHOICE POETRY QUESTIONS

Types of Questions

This process of analysis--or whatever your own method may be-should precede your answering the multiple-choice questions. The question writer has already gone through the same process, and the questions that you find on the exam will be very much like the ones you've just asked yourself.

1. Questions on dramatic situation: Examples:

Who is speaking? Where is she?

To whom is the poem addressed? Who is the speaker in lines 5-8? Where does the poem take place?

At what time of the year does the poem take place?

2. Questions on structure: Examples:

How are stanzas 1 and 2 related to stanza 3?

What word in line 20 refers back to an idea used in lines 5 10 and 15? ' '

Which of the following divisions of the poem best represents its structure?

3. Questions on theme: Examples:

Which of the following best sums up the meaning of stanza 2? With which of the following is the poem centrally concerned? The poet rejects the notion of an indifferent universe because ...

38 ANALYSIS OF EXAM AREAS SECTION I: MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS 39

4. Questions on grammar and meaning of words:

Examples:

Which of the following best defines the word "glass" as it is used in line 9?

To which of the following does the word "which" in line 7 refer?

The verb "had done" may best be paraphrased as ...

When answering questions on grammar or meaning, you must look carefully at the context. In questions of meaning, more often than not, the obvious meaning of a word is not the one used in the poem. If it were, there would be no reason to ask you a question about it. The answers to a question about the meaning of the word "glass," for example, might include

(A) a transparent material used in windows

(B) a barometer

(D) a telescope

(E) a drinking vessel

Without a context, you would have to call all five answers right. On an exam, a poem with a line like "The glass has fallen since the dawn" might well ask the meaning of "glass" with these five options, and the logical answer would be (B). The next line of the poem would niake the correct choice even clearer.

Similarly, grammar questions may exploit double meanings. The verb form "had broken" looks like a past perfect tense: I had broken the glass before I realized it. But a poem might also say "I had broken my heart unless I had seen her once more" in which case "had broken" is not a past perfect indicative verb, but a subjunctive in a conditional sentence. And this sentence could be paraphrased as "If I had not seen her once more, it would have broken my heart."

5. Questions on images and figurative language:

You should expect a large nu ber of these. Because the poems used on the exam must be complex enough to inspire ten to fifteen good multiple-choice questions, it is rare that a poem which does not rely on complex figurative language is chosen.

Examples:

To which of the following does the poet compare his love? The images in lines 3 and 8 come from what area of science?

The figure of the rope used in line 7 is used later in the poem in

line .. .

6. Questions on diction: Examples:

Which of the following words is used to suggest the poet's dislike of winter?

The poet's use of the word "air" in line 8 is to indicate .. .

The poet's delight in the garden is suggested by all of the following words EXCEPT .. .

Notice that some questions use a negative: "all of the following

... EXCEPT" is the most common phrasing. The exam always calls attention to a question of this sort by using capital letters.

7. Questions on tone, literary devices, and metrics: Examples:

The tone of the poem (or stanza) can best be described as ... Which of the following literary techniques is illustrated by the phrase "murmurous hum and buzz of the hive"? (onomatopoeia) The meter of the last line in each stanza is ...

40 ANALYSIS OF EXAM AREAS

Examples of Poetry Selections, Questions, and Answers

Set 1

The following poem, a sonnet by Keats, is a good example of the level of difficulty of the poetry on the literature exam. The selected poems are usually longer than the sonnet, but shorter poems appear sometimes. Read this poem carefully. Then answer the twelve multiple-choice questions that follow. Choose the best answer of the five.

On the Sonnet

If by dull rhymes our English must be chained, And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet

Fettered, in spite of pained loveliness,

Let us find out, if we must be constrained, (5) Sandals more interwoven and complete

To fit the naked foot of poesy;

Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress Of every chord, and see what may be gained By ear industrious, and attention meet; ·

(10) Misers of sound and syllable, no less

Than Midas of his coinage, let us be

Jealous of dead leaves in the bay-wreath crown; So, if we may not let the Muse be free,

She will be bound with garlands of her own.

1. The "we" ("us") of the poem refers to

(A) literary critics

(B) misers

(D) the Muses

(E) English poets

SECTION I: MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS 41

2. Which of the following best describes the major structural divisions of the poem?

(A) Lines 1-3; 4--6; 7-9; 10--14

(B) Lines 1-8; 9-14

3. The metaphor used in the first line of the poem compares

English to

(A) carefully guarded treasure

(B) Andromeda

(D) a necklace

(E) a sonnet

4. In lines 2-3, the poem compares the sonnet to Andromeda because

I. both are beautiful

II. neither is free

III. both are inventions of classical Greece

(A) III only

(B) I and II only (C) I and III only (D) II and III only (E) I, II, and III

5. The main verb of the first grammatically complete sentence of the poem is

(A) "must be" (line 1)

(B) "be chained" (line 1) (C) "Fettered" (line 3) (D) "let .. . find" (line 4) (E) "must be" (line 4)

42 ANALYSIS OF EXAM AREAS SECTION 1: MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS 43

6. The phrase "naked foot of poesy" in line 6 is an example of which of the following technical devices?

(A) Simile

(B) Personification

(D) Allusion

(E) Transferred epithet

7. In line 9, the word "meet" is best defined as

(A) suitable

(B) concentrated

(D) distributed

(E) introductory

8. The poet alludes to Midas in line 11 to encourage poets to be

(A) miserly (B) generous (C) mythical (D) magical (E) royal

9. In line 12, the phrase "dead leaves" probably refers to

(A) boring passages in poetry

(B) the pages of a book of poetry

(D) surprising but inappropriate original metaphors

(E) the closely guarded secrets of style that make great poetry

10. All of the following words denote restraint EXCEPT (A) "chained" (line 1)

(B) "Fettered" (line 3) (C) "constrained" (line 4) (D) "interwoven" (line 5) (E) "bound" (line 14)

11. Which of the following best states the central ideas of the p m? .

(A) Poems must be carefully crafted and decorously adorned.

(B) Poets must jealously guard the traditional forms, of the sonnet.

(D) The constraint of the sonnet form will lead to discipline' and creativity.

(E) Poems in restricted forms should be original and carefully crafted.

12. The poem is written in (A) rhymed couplets (B) blank verse

AFTER you have marked all the answers for the above questions, proceed to the next page to correct your responseS –

But, most importantly: BE CERTAIN YOU UNDERSTAND WHY THE ANSWER IS WHAT IT IS AND WHAT YOU NEED TO LEARN TO GET IT RIGHT THE NEXT TIME!!!

Answers for Set 1

1. (E) The first question asks you to identify the speaker and his audience. This is one of the poems which tell us nothing about the time period or the location of the speaker. But we do know he is a poet, since the poem is called "On the Sonnet" and deals with his ideas about how the sonnet should be composed. Since he speaks of English as "chained" by the rhymes of poetry (and since he writes in English), we infer that the speaker and his audience are English poets. The correct choice is (E). The next-best choice is (A), but though the poem does include some literary criticism, (E) is the "best" answer. The very existence of this poem tells us the speaker is a poet, and his plural pronoun defines his audience as like himself.

2. (C) The best choice here is (C), dividing the poem at the semicolons (which might have been periods) at the end of lines

6, 9, and 12. Those of you familiar with other sonnets will recognize that this is an unusual poem. Most sonnets break naturally in units of eight and six lines (Italian sonnets espe cially) or into three four-line units and a closing couplet (the

44 ANALYSIS OF EXAM AREAS

English, or Shakespearean, sonnet). But it is these restrictions Keats is complaining about. And so his poem falls into units of six, three, three, and two lines. And it pays no attention to the abba, abba, cdcdcd rhyme scheme of the Italian sonnet or to the abab, cdcd, efef, gg of the Shakespearean sonnet. Notice that you cannot stop at the comma in line 3. The first three lines are a dependent clause, and the sentence is not yet grammatically coherent.

3. (C) The metaphor presents English chained without defining any more clearly whether the language is compared to a human or an animal. The comparison to Andromeda in line 2 is a simile.

4. (B) This is an example of a question where part of your answer comes from reading the poem carefully and part from your general information. Both I and II are clear from the poem, since both Andromeda and the sonnet are said to be "sweet" and to have "loveliness" and both are "Fettered." Though Andromeda is the creation of Greek mythology-she was chained to a rock and rescued by Perseus-the sonnet is not an ancient Greek poetic form.

5. (D) The main verb of the sentence is "let (us) find." The verbs "must be chained" and "Fettered" are part of the dependent clause.

6. (B) There is no "like" or "as," so the figure is a metaphor, not a simile. It is also a personification, in this case, a metaphor in which poetry is represented as possessing human form, having a foot that can wear a sandal. Keats is probably punning here on another meaning of foot, the term to denote the metric unit of a line of verse.

7. (A) As it is used here, "meet" is an adjective meaning "suitable"or "fitting" (compare Hamlet's line "meet it is I set it down" or the phrase "meet and just").

SECTION 1: MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS ., 45

8. (A) This question calls for a literal reading of the line, not an explanation of the figure. Surprisingly, since Midas is usually viewed as a fool or a villain, Keats urges poets to be miserly, like Midas, though not with money but with the sounds and syllables of their poems.

9. (C) Here the question calls for an explanation of the metaphor "dead leaves." The adjective "Jealous" in this sentence does not mean "envious," as it usually does, but "watchful" or "very attentive to." The poet is urging other poets to scrupulously keep "dead leaves" from the bay-leaf crown that is traditionally associated with the poet. The metaphor, in keeping with the advice of the rest of the poem, is probably a reference to poetic practices that are no longer alive or natural like the green leaves of the laurel (bay) wreath. The word "leaves" here might be a play on "leaf' as "page," but the more important meaning is the metaphorical one, and (C) is the best of the five options.

10. (D) The question combines diction and structure. The word "interwoven" in its context refers to the structure of the sandal. Arguably, since an interwoven sandal fits the foot, even this word suggests constraint, but the question calls for the best answer of the five, and constraint is much more clearly the denotation of the other four choices. The reference of the sandals metaphor is probably to the rhyme scheme into which the poem (the foot) must fit. The more interwoven rhyme scheme Keats has in mind is the one he uses here: not the abab, cdcd, efef, gg of the traditional English sonnet where new rhymes appear in each of the following quatrains, but the "interwoven" abc, abd, cabcdede.

11. (E) This is the theme-of-the-poem question. Though Keats might agree with choice (A), this poem doesn't make this point. In all multiple-choice sets, beware of the answer that in itself is true or morally uplifting or an idea that poems often express but which is not the issue in the poem you're dealing with. Good, wrong answers, test writers believe, must sound true even if they are irrelevant. Choice (B) is an idea some poets may hold, but

this poem rejects the traditional forms if they have become

. ',I '