GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Identification of Poetry

Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English

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All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources

1 Diagnostic Test 158 Practice Tests Question of the Day Flashcards Learn by Concept

Example Questions

Example Question #71 : Identification

Peruvian poet César Vallejo wrote which of the following works?

Possible Answers:

The Book of Imaginary Beings

The Aleph

The Library of Babel

Los Heraldos Negros

Ficciones

Correct answer:

Los Heraldos Negros

Explanation:

Only Los Heraldos Negros is by Vallejo. The rest are works by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.

Example Question #71 : Identification Of Poetry

Nobel Prize-winning Mexican poet Octavio Paz wrote which of the following works?

Possible Answers:

No One Writes to the Colonel

The Labyrinth of Solitude

Love and Other Demons

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

The Autumn of the Patriarch

Correct answer:

The Labyrinth of Solitude

Explanation:

Only The Labyrinth of Solitude is by Octavio Paz. The other works are all novels by Mexican writer Gabriel Garcia Márquez.

Example Question #72 : Identification

Which Latin American poet wrote the collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair?

Possible Answers:

Octavio Paz

César Vallejo

Jorge Luis Borges

Mario Vargas Llosa

Pablo Neruda

Correct answer:

Pablo Neruda

Explanation:

This is Pablo Neruda. He employed a variety of poetic forms, including love poetry, epics, historical works, autobiography and political manifestos.

Example Question #72 : Identification Of Poetry

Glory be to God for dappled things –
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
      And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
 
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                Praise him.

The form of the poem is that of __________.

Possible Answers:

a curtal sonnet

a villanelle

a Spenserian sonnet

an Elizabethan sonnet

a roundel

Correct answer:

a curtal sonnet

Explanation:

The poem is an example of a curtal sonnet, which consists of 3/4 the number of lines in a standard Petrarchan sonnet. This form was developed by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It is worth knowing, but it is a somewhat obscure form, so the best approach is to use process of elimination. You absolutely have to know that the Spenserian sonnet and the Elizabethan sonnet are each 14 lines, so you can rule those out right away. You also need to know that the villanelle is a 19 line form in which the first and third lines function as refrains that repeat throughout the poem. The roundel is more obscure, but it is also features a refrain at the end of every other three-line stanza.

Passage adapted from "Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)

Example Question #73 : Identification Of Poetry

In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this dissociation, as is natural, was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, Milton and Dryden. Each of these men performed certain poetic functions so magnificently well that the magnitude of the effect concealed the absence of others. The language went on and in some respects improved; the best verse of Collins, Gray, Johnson, and even Goldsmith satisfies some of our fastidious demands better than that of Donne or Marvell or King. But while the language became more refined, the feeling became more crude. The feeling, the sensibility, expressed in the "Country Churchyard" (to say nothing of Tennyson and Browning) is cruder than that in the "Coy Mistress."

The title of a work by which of the following poets is specifically referenced in the passage?

Possible Answers:

George Herbert

John Donne

Samuel Johnson

Robert Browning

Thomas Gray

Correct answer:

Thomas Gray

Explanation:

Two poems are referenced by title in this passage: Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" and Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." Marvell is not one of the answer choices, so the only possible answer is Thomas Gray.

Example Question #74 : Identification Of Poetry

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Identify the poet of the following lines based on the content and style of the selection.

Possible Answers:

Ezra Pound

William Wordsworth

T. S. Eliot

Walt Whitman

John Keats

Correct answer:

T. S. Eliot

Explanation:

The lines are from T. S. Eliot's 1922 poem, "The Waste Land." It is widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the twentieth century.

Example Question #75 : Identification Of Poetry

Should God create another Eve, and I
Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no no, I feel
The Link of Nature draw me: Flesh of Flesh,
Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.

Which of the following poets wrote the excerpted lines?

Possible Answers:

William Shakespeare

John Milton

Anne Bradstreet

Edward Taylor

John Dryden

Correct answer:

John Milton

Explanation:

This is an excerpt from John Milton's epic poem, "Paradise Lost." The first version was published in 1667 and consisted of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse.

Passage adapted from Paradise Lost by John Milton, l.911-916 (1667)

Example Question #76 : Identification Of Poetry

If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
Some hidden Spirit shall inquire thy Fate,
Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the Peep of Dawn
Brushing with hasty Steps the Dews away
To meet the Sun upon the upland Lawn.
There at the Foot of yonder nodding Beech
That wreathes its old fantastic Roots so high,
His listless Length at Noontide wou'd he stretch,
And pore upon the Brook that babbles by."

Who wrote this poem?

Possible Answers:

Joseph Addison

William Cowper

Thomas Merton

John Dryden

Thomas Gray

Correct answer:

Thomas Gray

Explanation:

These are some of the final lines of Thomas Gray’s famous Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.

Passage adapted from "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray, ln.95-104 (1751)

Example Question #77 : Identification Of Poetry

If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
Some hidden Spirit shall inquire thy Fate,
Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the Peep of Dawn
Brushing with hasty Steps the Dews away
To meet the Sun upon the upland Lawn.
There at the Foot of yonder nodding Beech
That wreathes its old fantastic Roots so high,
His listless Length at Noontide wou'd he stretch,
And pore upon the Brook that babbles by."

Which of the following poems could not be described as a reaction to this work?

Possible Answers:

John Cunningham’s “An Elegy on a Pile of Ruins”

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire”

John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud”

Oliver Goldsmith’s “The Deserted Village”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam

Correct answer:

John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud”

Explanation:

All of the poems are arguably inspired by or draw elements from Gray’s poem except for John Donne’s famous sonnet, which was published in 1633.

Passage adapted from "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray, ln.95-104 (1751)

Example Question #78 : Identification Of Poetry

If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
Some hidden Spirit shall inquire thy Fate,
Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the Peep of Dawn
Brushing with hasty Steps the Dews away
To meet the Sun upon the upland Lawn.
There at the Foot of yonder nodding Beech
That wreathes its old fantastic Roots so high,
His listless Length at Noontide wou'd he stretch,
And pore upon the Brook that babbles by."

Which of the following is not a prevalent theme in the poem?

Possible Answers:

Christian faith

Human accomplishment

Agrarian reform

Human obscurity

Mortality

Correct answer:

Agrarian reform

Explanation:

Although the poem is set in a country churchyard, it does not discuss rural problems, including agrarian reform. Rather, the setting provides an idyllic backdrop for the deeper existential musings of the poem.

Passage adapted from "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray, ln.95-104 (1751)

All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources

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