AP English Literature and Composition › Identification of World Poetry After 1925
Which Caribbean poet wrote the seminal book-length poem Notebook of a Return to the Native Land?
Aimé Césaire
Ama Ata Aidoo
Stanley French
René Depestre
Kamau Brathwaite
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.
The Jamaican poet Jean “Binta” Breeze wrote all of the following except which collection of poetry?
Sea Grapes
Riddym Ravings and Other Poems
The Fifth Figure
The Arrival of Brighteye and Other Poems
Third World Girl
Sea Grapes is a 1976 poetry collection by Derek Walcott.
Which Nobel Prize-winning Caribbean poet wrote Omeros, a contemporary Caribbean epic poem that loosely reimagines Homer’s Iliad?
Derek Walcott
Ama Ata Aidoo
Stanley French
Aimé Césaire
Kamau Brathwaite
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.
Which of the following works is by Russian poet Osip Mandelstam?
Verses on the Unknown Soldier
Notes from the Underground
“The Overcoat”
“The Lady with the Dog”
Pale Fire
“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.
Which Nobel Prize-winning Eastern European poet wrote The World, City Without a Name, and The Unencompassed Earth?
Czesław Miłosz
Joseph Brodsky
Grigori Dashevsky
Wisława Szymborska
Jan Polkowski
This is the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz, who is also known for his nonfiction book denouncing Stalin titled The Captive Mind. Miłosz was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1980.
Which Nobel Prize-winning Eastern European poet wrote Elegy for John Donne and Other Poems, On Grief and Reason, and To Urania?
Czesław Miłosz
Joseph Brodsky
Grigori Dashevsky
Wisława Szymborska
Jan Polkowski
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.
Nobel Prize-winning Mexican poet Octavio Paz wrote which of the following works?
The Labyrinth of Solitude
Love and Other Demons
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
The Autumn of the Patriarch
No One Writes to the Colonel
Only The Labyrinth of Solitude is by Octavio Paz. The other works are all novels by Mexican writer Gabriel Garcia Márquez.
What is contemporary Japanese poetry called?
gendai-shi
haiku
shi
waka
tanka
All of these terms except “gendai-shi” refer to older, more traditional forms of Japanese poetry.
Peruvian poet César Vallejo wrote which of the following works?
Los Heraldos Negros
Ficciones
The Library of Babel
The Aleph
The Book of Imaginary Beings
Only Los Heraldos Negros is by Vallejo. The rest are works by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.
Which major Caribbean poet wrote The Arrivants, Middle Passages, and Born to Slow Horses?
Kamau Brathwaite
Ama Ata Aidoo
Stanley French
Aimé Césaire
Jean “Binta” Breeze
This is Kamau Brathwaite, a Barbados-born poet and author of critical works such as History of the Voice and The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica.