TREK 11/14/23

Question 1

alliteration

Answer 1

a repetition of the same consonant sounds in a sequence of words, usually at the
beginning of a word or stressed syllable: “descending dew drops”

Question 2

assonance

Answer 2

the repetition of similar internal vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry, as
in “I rose and told him of my woe.”

Question 3

figurative language

Answer 3

a form of language use in which the writers and speakers mean
something other than the literal meaning of their words. Two figures of speech that are
particularly important for poetry are simile and metaphor.

Question 4

simile

Answer 4

involves a comparison
between unlike things using like or as. For instance, “My love is like a red, red rose.”

Question 5

metaphor

Answer 5

a comparison between essentially unlike things without a word such as like or as.
For example, “My love is a red, red rose.”

Question 6

metonymy

Answer 6

a type of metaphor in which something closely associated with a subject is
substituted for it, such as saying the “silver screen” to mean motion pictures.

Question 7

imagery

Answer 7

the concrete representation of a sense impression, feeling, or idea that triggers our
imaginative ere-enactment of a sensory experience. Images may be visual (something seen),
aural (something heard), tactile (something felt), olfactory (something smelled), or gustatory
(something tasted). Imagery may also refer to a pattern of related details in a poem.

Question 8

rhyme

Answer 8

the repetition of identical or similar concluding syllables in different words, most
often at the ends of lines.

Question 9

rhythm

Answer 9

the term used to refer to the recurrence of stressed and unstressed sounds in poetry.
Poets rely heavily on rhythm to express meaning and convey feeling.

Question 10

caesura

Answer 10

a strong pause
within a line of poetry that contributes to the rhythm of the line

Question 11

run-on line / enjambment

Answer 11

a line that ends without a pause and continues into the next line for its meaning is called

Question 12

stanza

Answer 12

a grouping of lines, set off by a space, which usually has a set pattern of meter and
rhyme.

Question 13

tone

Answer 13

conveys the speaker’s implied attitude toward the poem’s subject.

Question 14

diction

Answer 14

a writer’s particular word choice

Question 15

syntax

Answer 15

order of words in sentences or phrases

Question 16

Natasha Trethewey

Answer 16

Natasha Trethewey (born April 26, 1966 in Mississippi) is an American poet who served as United States Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014. She won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her 2006 collection Native Guard.

Trethewey is the Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University. She previously served as the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University, where she taught from 2001 to 2017.

Trethewey was elected in 2019 both to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Trethewey “is always unveiling the racial and historical inequities of our country and the ongoing personal expense of these injustices.” Trethewey was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022.

Question 17

Trethewey’s “South” (2014)

Answer 17

Trethewey recounts returning to her hometown in Mississippi, and despite the racist history she finds beauty in the place, and declares she will be buried there.

Question 18

Ezra Pound

Answer 18

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a collaborator in Fascist Italy and the Salò Republic during World War II.

Pound’s contribution to poetry began in the early 20th century with his role in developing Imagism, a movement stressing precision and economy of language. Working in London as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, he helped discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce.

Angered by the carnage of World War I, Pound blamed the war on finance capitalism. Through the 1930s and 1940s he promoted an economic theory known as social credit, wrote for publications owned by the British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley, embraced Benito Mussolini’s fascism, and expressed support for Adolf Hitler. During World War II, Pound recorded hundreds of paid radio propaganda broadcasts for the Italian government, including in German-occupied Italy, in which he attacked the United States Federal Government, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Great Britain, international finance, munitions makers, arms dealers, Jews, and others, as abettors and prolongers of the war.

Question 19

Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” (1913)

Answer 19

A two-line poem describing the faces of people reflecting on the wet, black concrete. Considering he is attributed with building the idea of imagery, I suppose he was wanting to see how simply he could convey imagery.

Question 20

Claude McKay

Answer 20

Festus Claudius “Claude” McKay OJ (September 15, 1890[1] – May 22, 1948) was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

Born in Jamaica, McKay first travelled to the United States to attend college, and encountered W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk which stimulated McKay’s interest in political involvement. He moved to New York City in 1914 and, in 1919, he wrote “If We Must Die”, one of his best known works, a widely reprinted sonnet responding to the wave of white-on-black race riots and lynchings following the conclusion of the First World War.

Question 21

Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die” (1919)

Answer 21

Described his views on the attack of Black folk. He explains that even when attacked, they should not allow them to portray them as animals, and to instead die with dignity, strong and noble, but fighting back.

Question 22

Denice Frohman

Answer 22

Denice Frohman is a poet and performer from New York City. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The BreakBeat Poets: LatiNext, Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. A former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, she’s featured on hundreds of stages from The Apollo to The White House. Recently, she debuted her one-woman show, Esto No Tiene Nombre, centering the oral histories of Latina lesbian elders. She lives in Philadelphia.

Question 23

Denice Frohman’s “Accents” (

Answer 23

She described her mother’s strong Hispanic accent, and how despite English words rolling off her tongue differently, it gives it a different kind of emphasis and power.

Question 24

Carol Ann Duffy

Answer 24

Dame Carol Ann Duffy (born 23 December 1955) is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Poet Laureate in May 2009, until 2019. She was the first female poet, the first Scottish-born poet and the first openly lesbian poet to hold the Poet Laureate position.

Question 25

Carol Ann Duffy’s “Little Red Cap” (2006)

Answer 25

She described Little Red Cap as a girl looking to end her childhood and indulge in more grown-up things, as many young people wish for. She seeks out the wolf as he makes her feel grown and far from her childhood. It covers the difficult change, but it is a choice she was able to make herself and not have thrust upon her.

Question 26

Sylvia Plath

Answer 26

Sylvia Plath (/plæθ/; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Plath graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts and the University of Cambridge, England, where she was a student at Newnham College. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England. Their relationship was tumultuous and, in her letters, Plath alleges abuse at his hands. They had two children before separating in 1962.

Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life, and was treated multiple times with early versions of electroconvulsive therapy. She ended her own life in 1963.

Question 27

Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” (1965)

Answer 27

Sylvia Plath wrote “Lady Lazarus” in 1962, during a creative burst of energy in the months before her death by suicide in 1963. The poem alludes to the biblical story of Lazarus, whom Jesus famously resurrected. The poem’s female speaker also dies and is resurrected—multiple times, in fact, and not always happily. Each revival is akin to a circus performance for a voyeuristic, “peanut-crunching crowd” that’s hoping for a glimpse of the speaker’s “scars.” The speaker ultimately warns that she will one day rise from the ashes of her death and devour “men like air.” The dark poem provides insight into a suicidal mind, a glimpse at the horror of being a woman in a patriarchal world, and a critique of society’s twisted fascination with suffering.

Question 28

Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” (1965)

Answer 28

“Daddy” is a controversial and highly anthologized poem by the American poet Sylvia Plath. Published posthumously in 1965 as part of the collection Ariel, the poem was originally written in October 1962, a month after Plath’s separation from her husband, the poet Ted Hughes, and four months before her death by suicide. It is a deeply complex poem informed by the poet’s relationship with her deceased father, Otto Plath. Told from the perspective of a woman addressing her father, the memory of whom has an oppressive power over her, the poem details the speaker’s struggle to break free of his influence.

Question 29

E. E. Cummings

Answer 29

Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays, and several essays. He is often regarded as one of the most important American poets of the 20th century. Cummings is associated with modernist free-form poetry. Much of his work has idiosyncratic syntax and uses lower-case spellings for poetic expression.

Question 30

E. E. Cumming’s “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in” (1952)

Answer 30

One of E. E. Cummings’s best known love poems. The speaker feels an intense connection to an unidentified lover, addressing the poem to this person and suggesting that everything in life has become infused with their romance.

Question 31

Jorge Luis Borges

Answer 31

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known books are collections of short stories exploring motifs such as dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology. Borges’s works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and have had a major influence on the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature. He became completely blind by the age of 55. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. By the 1960s, his work was translated and published widely in the United States and Europe.

Question 32

Jorge Luis Borges’ “Instants”

Answer 32

He describes his regret for not living life to the fullest. Nearing the end of his life, he now understands he was too cautious, and wished he would have reached out more and done more things without fear.

Question 33

Langston Hughes

Answer 33

James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that “the Negro was in vogue”, which was later paraphrased as “when Harlem was in vogue.”

Question 34

Langston Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again”

Answer 34

He describes all the things people wish for in their ideal America, but point out that, as a black man, all of the values they are preaching (such as extended freedoms) were not “made for him” or included people like him.

Question 35

Anne Sexton

Answer 35

Anne Sexton (born Anne Gray Harvey; November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974 in Massechussets) was an American poet known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die. Her poetry details her long battle with bipolar disorder, suicidal tendencies, and intimate details from her private life, including relationships with her husband and children, whom it was later alleged she physically and sexually assaulted.

Question 36

Anne Sexton’s “Her Kind” (1960)

Answer 36

A speaker inhabits a series of witchy personas who live outside restrictive patriarchal gender roles. Women whom society ostracizes for rejecting traditional femininity, the poem suggests, can nevertheless feel solidarity with each other.

Question 37

Dylan Thomas

Answer 37

Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953)[1] was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems “Do not go gentle into that good night.” He became widely popular in his lifetime and remained so after his death at the age of 39 in New York City. By then, he had acquired a reputation, which he had encouraged, as a “roistering, drunken and doomed poet”.

Question 38

Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night” (1951)

Answer 38

The primary sentiment of “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” is that life is precious and should be fought for at every turn. The poem’s speaker offers insight into how to face death with dignity and ferocity rather than resignation, believing that people should “burn and rave” as they approach death.

Question 39

Amanda Gorman

Answer 39

Amanda Gorman is the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, as well as an award-winning writer and cum laude graduate of Harvard University, where she studied Sociology. She has written for the New York Times and has three books forthcoming with Penguin Random House.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, she began writing at only a few years of age. Now her words have won her invitations to the Obama White House and to perform for Lin-Manuel Miranda, Al Gore, Secretary Hillary Clinton, Malala Yousafzai, and others.

Question 40

Amanda Gorman’s “The Hill We Climb”

Answer 40

The poem was written to call for “unity and collaboration and togetherness” among the American people and emphasize the opportunity that the future holds.

Question 41

Marianne Moore

Answer 41

Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for its formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit.

Question 42

Marianne Moore’s “Poetry”

Answer 42

Marianne Moore engages directly in a debate with Tolstoy and William Butler Yeats, quoting Tolstoy’s dislike of “business documents and / school-books” and Yeats’s condemnation of “literalists of / the imagination,” before defending the roots of poetry in the literal, businesslike raw material of everyday life, her equivalent of Eliot’s “variety and complexity.”

Question 43

Edgar Allan Poe

Answer 43

Edgar Allan Poe (né Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, author, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism and Gothic fiction in the United States, and of American literature. Poe was one of the country’s earliest practitioners of the short story, and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction. He is the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Question 44

Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee”

Answer 44

“Annabel Lee” is the last complete poem[1] composed by American author Edgar Allan Poe. Like many of Poe’s poems, it explores the theme of the death of a beautiful woman.[2] The narrator, who fell in love with Annabel Lee when they were young, has a love for her so strong that even angels are envious. He retains his love for her after her death. There has been debate over who, if anyone, was the inspiration for “Annabel Lee”. Though many women have been suggested, Poe’s wife Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe is one of the more credible candidates. Written in 1849, it was not published until shortly after Poe’s death that same year.

Question 45

Emily Dickinson

Answer 45

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, into a prominent family with strong ties to its community. After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family’s home in Amherst. Evidence suggests that Dickinson lived much of her life in isolation. Considered an eccentric by locals, she developed a penchant for white clothing and was known for her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even to leave her bedroom. Dickinson never married, and most of her friendships were based entirely upon correspondence.

Question 46

Emily Dickinson’s “A Bird, came down the Walk”

Answer 46

A speaker’s seemingly everyday encounter with a bird leads to thoughts about the frightening side of nature—as well as nature’s beauty. Under this speaker’s watchful eye, the bird is at once a merciless predator, an anxious and vulnerable animal, and a lovely spark of life. Like many of Emily Dickinson’s poems, this one uses unique and unconventional syntax (a.k.a. the order of words in a sentence). It was published only after Dickinson’s death, when her younger sister discovered a treasure trove of poetry hidden in her bedroom, and first appeared in a posthumous collection, Poems, in 1891.

Question 47

Audre Lorde

Answer 47

Audre Lorde (born Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, professor, philosopher, intersectional feminist, poet and civil rights activist. She was a self-described “black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet,” who dedicated her life and talents to confronting all forms of injustice, as she believed there could be “no hierarchy of oppressions”.

As a poet, she is well known for technical mastery and emotional expression, as well as her poems that express anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life. As a spoken word artist, her delivery has been called powerful, melodic, and intense by the Poetry Foundation.[3] Her poems and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, feminism, lesbianism, illness and disability, and the exploration of black female identity.

Question 48

Audre Lorde’s “Power” (1978)

Answer 48

The poem was written in response to the death of Clifford Glover, a 10-year-old Black child who, in 1973, was shot and killed by a white police officer named Thomas Shea. Without identifying the subjects by name, Lorde portrays Glover’s death in graphic detail, expressing deep rage and sorrow over the brutality of his killing. “Power” also speaks to the systemic racism that led to Shea’s acquittal by a jury of eleven white people and a single black person. Featuring stark free verse and intense imagery, “Power” condemns racial injustice and police brutality in America, while also capturing one writer’s search for words that can make a difference.

Question 49

William Butler Yeats

Answer 49

William Butler Yeats[a] (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist and writer, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. He was awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature, he served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State.

Question 50

William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming”

Answer 50

Written in 1919 soon after the end of World War I, it describes a deeply mysterious and powerful alternative to the Christian idea of the Second Coming—Jesus’s prophesied return to the Earth as a savior announcing the Kingdom of Heaven. The poem’s first stanza describes a world of chaos, confusion, and pain. The second, longer stanza imagines the speaker receiving a vision of the future, but this vision replaces Jesus’s heroic return with what seems to be the arrival of a grotesque beast. With its distinct imagery and vivid description of society’s collapse, “The Second Coming” is also one of Yeats’s most quoted poems.

Question 51

Sandra Cisneros

Answer 51

Sandra Cisneros (born December 20, 1954) is an American writer. She is best known for her first novel, The House on Mango Street (1983), and her subsequent short story collection, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991). Her work experiments with literary forms that investigate emerging subject positions, which Cisneros herself attributes to growing up in a context of cultural hybridity and economic inequality that endowed her with unique stories to tell. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, was awarded one of 25 new Ford Foundation Art of Change fellowships in 2017, and is regarded as a key figure in Chicano literature.

Question 52

Sandra Cisneros’ “Loose Woman”

Answer 52

‘Loose Woman’ by Sandra Cisneros is a bold and empowering poem that challenges societal expectations and celebrates female autonomy. Through vivid and defiant language, the speaker embraces derogatory labels and redefines them as symbols of strength.

The poem explores themes of liberation, defiance, and the power of self-expression. It encourages readers to break free from oppressive norms, embraces their own agency, and celebrate their unique identities.

Question 53

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Answer 53

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson FRS (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria’s reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor’s Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, “Timbuktu”.

Question 54

Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses”

Answer 54

The poem takes the form of a dramatic monologue spoken by Ulysses, a character who also appears in Homer’s Greek epic The Odyssey and Dante’s Italian epic the Inferno (Ulysses is the Latinized name of Odysseus). In The Odyssey, Ulysses/Odysseus struggles to return home, but in Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” an aged Ulysses is frustrated with domestic life and yearns to set sail again and continue exploring the world. Dante seems to condemn Ulysses’s recklessness as an explorer, but in Tennyson’s poem, there is nobility and heroism in Ulysses’ boundless curiosity and undaunted spirit.