AP English Literature and Composition › Identification of American Poetry Before 1925
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs.
Who wrote the poem from which these lines are excerpted?
Robert Frost
Edgar Allan Poe
Emily Dickinson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
“Mending Wall,” published in 1914, is one of Frost’s better known works. The poem is written in blank verse and discusses a dispute between two neighbors about the necessity of a fence between their properties.
Passage adapted from "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost in Modern American Poetry (ed. Untermeyer, 1919)
Hear the sledges with the bells,
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars, that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
This stanza is from a poem by which poet?
Edgar Allan Poe
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Robert Frost
Emily Dickinson
William Cullen Bryant
This poem is Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Bells.” Known also for his short fiction, much of which has a macabre tone and a preoccupation with human mortality, Poe wrote “The Bells” with the aid of literary devices such as onomatopoeia, metaphor, and diacope. It was published posthumously.
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil,
this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Who wrote this poem?
Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson
Edgar Allan Poe
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Anne Bradstreet
This is the opening of Walt Whitman’s beautiful “Song of Myself,” taken from Leaves of Grass (1855). The poem is said to represent the heart of Whitman’s poetic vision and be inspired by the Transcendentalist movement, although it was initially criticized for its raw, uncensored depictions of human sexuality.
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter – bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”
During which decade was this poem published?
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1820s
Even if you weren’t sure when this poem was published, 1895, you could rule out the other choices. Stephen Crane lived a short life, dying in 1900 at the age of 29. All of the five books Crane published in his lifetime were released in the six year period between 1893 and 1899.
The passage is adapted from "In the Desert," which appeared in Stephen Crane's The Black Rider and Other Lines (1895).
I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes— the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
This poem was written by __________.
Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson
Ambrose Bierce
Robert Frost
Carl Sandburg
This passage is adapted from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” taken from the first edition of his Leaves of Grass (1855). Always be vigilant about the edition of Leaves of Grass, as Whitman significantly revised and expanded the book in later editions.
Passage adapted from "Song of Myself" in Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, ln.1-8 (1855)
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Which American author wrote this poem?
Walt Whitman
Stephen Crane
Robert Frost
William Cullen Bryant
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Written by Walt Whitman in 1865 (and popularized by the movie, Dead Poets Society), this iconic American elegy eulogizes Abraham Lincoln, compaings him to a stalwart ship captain. “O Captain! My Captain!” is included in later editions of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and often accompanies another Whitman elegy for Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”
I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes— the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
In what decade was this poem first published?
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
The key word in this question is "first." Whitman first published the poem in 1855, but he edited it and published new versions until his death in 1892. Over nearly four decades, the volume expanded from a dozen poems to more than 400.
Passage adapted from "Song of Myself" in Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, ln.1-8 (1855)
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
Identify the title of poem from which the selection was adapted based on its content and style.
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
“I Need Not Go"
“At a Window"
“Howl”
“If You Forget Me”
The stanza is from T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which was published in 1915.
Passage adapted from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" l.99-110 (1915)
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter – bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”
The same author also wrote which famous war novel?
The Red Badge of Courage
All Quiet on the Western Front
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Scarlet Letter
The Naked and the Dead
Stephen Crane published the novel The Red Badge of Courage in 1895, the same year in which The Black Riders and Other Lines, his only volume of poetry, was published_._ He was said to prefer The Black Riders and Other Lines to this novel, although the latter was vastly more famous.
The passage is adapted from "In the Desert," which appeared in Stephen Crane's The Black Rider and Other Lines (1895). Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), Nathaniel Hawthorne's T_he Scarlet Letter_ (1850), and Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1958) were all used as alternative options.
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Who wrote this poem?
Emily Dickinson
Robert Frost
Edgar Allan Poe
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Anne Bradstreet
This is “Hope is the Thing With Feathers,” written by Emily Dickinson and published after her death. Although Dickinson’s poetry is often recognizable by her extensive use of em dashes (see “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” et al.), readers can also distinguish her work by her short lines and stanzas, her keen observations, and her philosophical musing.