AP English Literature and Composition › Contexts of British Poetry After 1925
The poet’s relationship with which American writer is the subject of Birthday Letters?
Sylvia Plath
Adrienne Rich
Marianne Moore
Elizabeth Bishop
Anne Sexton
In Birthday Letters (1998), Hughes examines the suicide of his first wife, American poet Sylvia Plath. Hughes and Plath were married in 1956, and Plath died in 1963.
In what decade was The Whitsun Weddings written?
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
The Whitsun Weddings was first published in 1964. Philip Larkin was born in 1922 and died in 1985, which rules out a few of the answer choices.
Which of the following is another collection of poetry by Mina Loy?
Songs to Joannes
Tender Buttons
Nightwood
An Atlas of the Difficult World
Crossing the Water
In addition to The Lost Lunar Baedeker (1923)and Lunar Baedeker & Time Tables (1958), Loy wrote Songs to Joannes, a collection of frank, experimental love poetry,in 1915. Tender Buttons (1914) is by Gertrude Stein, Nightwood (1936) is by Djuna Barnes, An Atlas of the Difficult World (1990) is by Adrienne Rich, and Crossing the Water (1971) is by Sylvia Plath.
Which of the following was not an associate of Mina Loy?
Conrad Aiken
Man Ray
Marcel Duchamp
Ezra Pound
Arthur Cravan
Conrad Aiken is known for openly criticizing Loy’s poetry. All the others were affiliated with Mina Loy in some way – most through her Greenwich Village ties.
Which of the following was not written by the author of The Whitsun Weddings?
The Sea and the Mirror
Jill
High Windows
The Less Deceived
All What Jazz
The Sea and the Mirror is a 1958 poetry collection by W.H. Auden. Jill (1946), High Windows (1974), The Less Deceived (1955), and All What Jazz (1970) are all by the prolific Philip Larkin.
Which of the following subjects does not appear in The Whitsun Weddings?
a 1798 rebellion by the United Irishmen
a medieval tomb in Sussex, England
renting a room
volunteers enlisting in World War I
a train journey from Kingston upon Hull
A medieval Sussex tomb is the subject of the poem “An Arundel Tomb,” renting a room is the subject of “Mr. Bleaney,” volunteer enlistment and slaughter is the subject of “MCMXIV,” and a train journey is the subject of “The Whitsun Weddings” – all of which are poems included in Larkin’s The Whitsun Weddings. The United Irishmen rebellion is the subject of “Requiem for the Croppies,” (1966) a famous poem by Irish poet Seamus Heaney.
During what decade was Birthday Letters published?
1990s
1980s
1970s
1960s
1950s
Knowing that this was Hughes’ last work of poetry, and knowing that he lived from 1930 to 1998, you could have inferred that Birthday Letters was published in the 1990s (1998, to be precise).
Who is the author of The Whitsun Weddings?
Philip Larkin
W.H. Auden
Ezra Pound
Wallace Stevens
Seamus Heaney
The Whitsun Weddings (1964) is Philip Larkin’s 8th book, and it contains such well-known poems as the title poem, “MCMXIV,” and “An Arundel Tomb.”
Which of the following is not another work by the author of Birthday Letters?
Candles in Babylon
The Iron Man
The Hawk in the Rain
Crow
Winter Pollen
Ted Hughes wrote The Iron Man (1968), The Hawk in the Rain (1957), Crow (1970), and Winter Pollen (1994). Candles in Babylon is a 1982 collection by the British-born American humanist poet Denise Levertov.
Which of the following labels could not be applied to Mina Loy’s work?
Bourgeois
Feminist
Futurist
Bohemian
Avant-garde
Mina Loy’s poetry and fiction are known for their futurist, feminist leanings as well as their emphases on the avant-garde and the bohemian life-style. Her work was not bourgeois – conventional, middle-class, or materialistic – in any way.