Exam Questions for Analyzing 20th-Century Poetry and Poetics

Questions on Metre, Symbolism, and Figurative Language

Choose any five of the following seven questions and respond in single-paragraph answers of five to eight sentences. Your responses should be concise but detailed, and should employ quoted material to support major points.

1) Define the metre of “Provide, Provide” and comment on why Frost might have chosen such a jingly rhythmical pattern.

2) What are the most important symbolic associations of the color green in Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill”?

3) Identify the metaphors and the similes in Earle Birney’s poem “From the Hazel Bough.” Is his use of the metaphors different from his use of the similes?

4)In “love is more thicker than forget” e.e. cummings uses alliteration, assonance and consonance. Identify an example of each and comment on the effect of these devices in the poem.

5)What is the chief symbol in Gwendolyn MacEwen’s “The Red Bird You Wait For”? What does the symbol suggest beyond its literal meaning?

6)Describe the rhyme pattern in W. B. Yeats’s poem “Leda and the Swan” and comment on its effect.

7) After reviewing the entry on rhyme in Abrams’s Glossary, identify three different types of it in Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel.” This part is about Unit 2 Choose one of the following poems from 20th-Century Poetry and Poetics and write an Your explication should be based on the information presented in Unit 2. “The Burning of Paper, Not Children” by Adrienne Rich “The Child Who Walks Backwards” by Lorna Crozier “A Walk in Kyoto” by Earle Birney