All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #14 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
Which of the following is not another work by the author of Helen in Egypt?
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
Hippolytus Temporizes
Red Roses for Bronze
Hymen
Sea Garden
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
In addition to Helen in Egypt, H.D. wrote the poetry collections Sea Garden (1916), Hymen (1921), Hippolytus Temporizes (1927), and Red Roses for Bronze (1932). Sword Blades and Poppy Seed is a 1914 collection by the Imagist poet Amy Lowell.
Helen in Egypt (1961) was H.D's last book of poetry.
Example Question #15 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
Which of the following labels could not be applied to the work of the author of Helen in Egypt?
Imagist
Avant-garde
Feminist
Confessional
Classicist
Confessional
H.D. was not a confessional poet, as this movement did not emerge until the late 1950s and early 1960s. Her work, however, took inspiration from Classical Greek poetry and was both Imagist and avant-garde. She was also an outspoken feminist, and works such as Helen in Egypt challenged traditional male voices in poetry.
Helen in Egypt (1961) was H.D's last book of poetry.
Example Question #16 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
Who is the author of Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth?
Marianne Moore
Gwendolyn MacEwen
Amy Lowell
Adrienne Rich
Sylvia Plath
Adrienne Rich
Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth (2007) is one of Adrienne Rich’s last poetry collections.
Amy Lowell wrote Legends (1921), Sylvia Plath wrote The Bell Jar (1963), Marianne Moore wrote O to Be a Dragon (1959), and Gwendolyn MacEwen wrote The Rising Fire (1963).
Example Question #17 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
Which of the following is not another book by the author of Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth?
The Diamond Cutters, and Other Poems
Diving into the Wreck
The Colossus and Other Poems
The Dream of a Common Language
An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems
The Colossus and Other Poems
The Colossus and Other Poems is a 1960 collection by Sylvia Plath. All the rest are works by Adrienne Rich.
An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems was published in 1991, The Diamond Cutters, and Other Poems was published in 1955, Diving into the Wreck was published in 1973, The Dream of a Common Language was published in 1978, and Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth was published in 2007.
Example Question #18 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
What award did the author of Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth infamously decline?
The Nobel Prize
The Pulitzer Prize
The U.S. Poet Laureate
The National Medal of Arts
The National Book Award
The National Medal of Arts
In 1997, Rich declined the National Medal of Arts in order to protest a proposition to cut government funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and other government policies.
Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth was published in 2007.
Example Question #19 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
Who is the author of Meditations in an Emergency?
John Ashbery
Frank O’Hara
Denis Johnson
Kenneth Koch
William S. Burroughs
Frank O’Hara
Meditations in an Emergency (1957) is Frank O’Hara’s third collection. The title is allegedly an allusion to a work by the English poet John Donne.
Kenneth Koch wrote Thank You and Other Poems (1962), John Ashbery wrote Your Name Here (2000), William S. Burroughs wrote Junky (1953), and Denis Jonson wrote Jesus' Son (1992).
Example Question #21 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
The author of Meditations in an Emergency was considered an important founder of which literary group?
The Factory
The Inklings
The Algonquin Round Table
The Bloomsbury Group
The New York School
The New York School
Along with Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara was an important member of the New York School and contributed greatly to its surrealist, abstract expressionist, and avant-garde aesthetic.
Meditations in an Emergency was published in 1957.
Example Question #22 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
Which of the following is not a title of a poem in the collection Meditations in an Emergency?
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
On Rachmaninoff's Birthday
Romanze, or The Music Students
To the Harbormaster
For Grace, After a Party
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” is a 1917 poem by Wallace Stevens.
All of the other answer choices were published in Frank O'Hara's Meditations in an Emergency (1957).
Example Question #23 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
Who is the author of Helen in Egypt?
Marianne Moore
H.D.
Ezra Pound
Robert Lowell
Amy Lowell
H.D.
This is the female Imagist poet and prose writer H.D (H.D was the pen name of Hilda Doolittle). H.D was born in 1886, and was active in publishing from 1916 until her death in 1961.
Ezra Pound wrote Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (1920), Amy Lowell (another American Imagist poet) wrote A Dome of Many Coloured Glass (1912), Robert Lowell wrote the Mills of the Kavanaughs (1951), and Marianne Moore wrote Nevertheless (1944).
Helen in Egypt (1961) was H.D's last book of poetry.
Example Question #24 : Contexts Of American Poetry After 1925
What is another name of the author of Helen in Egypt?
D.H. Lawrence
Hilda Doolittle
Donald Hughes
Henry Douglas
Henrietta Davenport
Hilda Doolittle
H.D. is the pen name of Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961).
Henry Douglas, Henrietta Davenport, and Donald Hughes were not notable American poets at all, but were provided here as alternative names with the initials H.D. The novelist and poet D.H. Lawrence wrote Sons and Lovers (1913).
Helen in Egypt (1961) was H.D's last book of poetry.