Select Relevant/Sufficient Evidence: Poetry Practice Test

Read the poem excerpt below.

In “Field Guide to Drought,” the speaker addresses a friend who insists things will “go back to normal.”

Poem excerpt:

1 You say the rain is only late,

2 like a train we can hear but not see.

3 I walk the creek bed anyway—

4 its stones arranged like knuckles.

5 The cattails have learned to whisper dust.

6 Even the frogs have revised their hymns

7 into something shorter, more practical.

8 At night, the moon hangs over the pasture

9 like a pale coin no one can spend.

10 I keep a glass by the sink, out of habit,

11 and it keeps being empty, out of truth.

Which choice provides the most relevant evidence for the claim that the poem undermines the friend’s optimism by portraying adaptation as a forced, ongoing revision?

Read the poem excerpt below.

In “Orchard Lesson,” the speaker recalls being taught to prune trees and suggests the lesson extends beyond gardening.

Poem excerpt:

1 You said: cut where the branch remembers spring,

2 not where it begs to keep its extra leaves.

3 The shears made a clean, bright click—

4 a sound like choosing.

5 Sap rose, astonished, at the wound.

6 I wanted to apologize to every green thing.

7 But you kept walking, pointing out the crowded limbs:

8 what grows too close, grows thin.

9 That year the apples came heavy,

10 and the ladder stopped shaking under my feet.

Which choice provides the most relevant evidence for the claim that the poem portrays restraint as a deliberate, empowering act rather than a loss?