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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Example Questions
Example Question #71 : Identification
Peruvian poet César Vallejo wrote which of the following works?
Los Heraldos Negros
The Aleph
Ficciones
The Library of Babel
The Book of Imaginary Beings
Los Heraldos Negros
Only Los Heraldos Negros is by Vallejo. The rest are works by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.
Example Question #11 : Identification Of World Poetry After 1925
Nobel Prize-winning Mexican poet Octavio Paz wrote which of the following works?
The Autumn of the Patriarch
The Labyrinth of Solitude
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
No One Writes to the Colonel
Love and Other Demons
The Labyrinth of Solitude
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?
Pablo Neruda
Mario Vargas Llosa
César Vallejo
Octavio Paz
Jorge Luis Borges
Pablo Neruda
This is Pablo Neruda. He employed a variety of poetic forms, including love poetry, epics, historical works, autobiography and political manifestos.
Example Question #181 : Identification
The form of the poem is that of __________.
an Elizabethan sonnet
a Spenserian sonnet
a curtal sonnet
a roundel
a villanelle
a curtal sonnet
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 #181 : Identification
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?
Samuel Johnson
Thomas Gray
John Donne
Robert Browning
George Herbert
Thomas Gray
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 #2 : Identification Of British Poetry 1660–1925
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.
Walt Whitman
T. S. Eliot
William Wordsworth
John Keats
Ezra Pound
T. S. Eliot
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 #181 : Identification
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?
John Milton
Anne Bradstreet
William Shakespeare
Edward Taylor
John Dryden
John Milton
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 #4 : Identification Of British Poetry 1660–1925
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?
John Dryden
William Cowper
Thomas Merton
Joseph Addison
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray
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 #183 : Identification
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?
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam
Oliver Goldsmith’s “The Deserted Village”
John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud”
John Cunningham’s “An Elegy on a Pile of Ruins”
John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud”
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 #1 : Identification Of British Poetry 1660–1925
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?
Human accomplishment
Agrarian reform
Christian faith
Mortality
Human obscurity
Agrarian reform
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)
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