Question: According to Langston Hughes’s essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (his answer to George Schuyler’s essay “Negro Art Hokum”), what is the “mountain” that stands in the way of “any true Negro art in America” ?

• 1. It is the racial discrimination endemic in the white community.
• 2. It is the racial segregation in the South.
• 3. It is a widespread “urge toward whiteness” among African Americans.
• 4. It is a widespread “urge to incorporate and neutralize other cultures” among white Americans.

Question: Which of the following statements best characterizes the form of Claude McKay’s poem “The Harlem Dancer” ?

• 1. It is an English sonnet.
• 2. It is an Italian sonnet.
• 3. It is a Spenserian sonnet.
• 4. It is a free verse poem.

Question: Which of the following descriptors does NOT apply to the features of French Symbolist poetry that influenced other modernist poetry ?

• 1. French Symbolist poetry is full of exaggerated metaphors.
• 2. French Symbolist poetry has narrative clarity.
• 3. French Symbolist poetry is shocking.
• 4. French Symbolist poetry is formally experimental.

Question: What is the most notable characteristic of Ezra Pound’s “In a Station at the Metro” ?

• 1. The form of a villanelle
• 2. The use of synesthesia
• 3. The use of simile
• 4. The use of metaphor

Question: Yeats’s “Song of Wandering Aengus” ends with the lines: “And pluck till time and times are done/The silver apples of the moon/The golden apples of the sun.” Which of the following is NOT a symbolic meaning of the apples ?

• 1. They symbolize the return to a lost paradise.
• 2. They point to alchemical elements, which in turn symbolize the body and the soul.
• 3. They symbolize the coming apocalypse.
• 4. They symbolize a fulfilled longing.

Question: Which of the following statements best expresses the difference between how visual images functioned in World War I poetry and Imagist poetry ?

• 1. There were no significant differences in the functioning of visual images in these two types of poetry.
• 2. The Imagists relied on visual images to achieve clarity of expression, whereas World War I poets relied on visual images to subtly punctuate their often desperate political messages.
• 3. The Imagists valued brevity, which could be achieved with precise visual images, whereasWorldWar I poets preferred declamatory statements in their poems.
• 4. WorldWar I poets valued clarity of expression through visual images, whereas Imagists relied on complex expression through emotional visual images.

Question: Ezra Pound’s “Cantos” may be called a modernist epic, though its form ultimately defies classification. Pound’s poem alludes to which of the following epic poems ?

• 1. The Mahabharata
• 2. Paradise Lost
• 3. The Odyssey
• 4. The Aeneid

Question: Which of the following statements does NOT characterize the poet e. e. cummings ?

• 1. Ivy League educated
• 2. Active pacifist during both world wars
• 3. Popularized the use of free verse
• 4. A private and self-effacing person

Question: Ezra Pound’s poem “In a Station of the Metro” reads: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd;/ Petals on a wet, black bough.” Which of the following statements best characterizes this poem ?

• 1. It seeks to diminish the distance between society and nature.
• 2. It seeks to amplify the distance between society and nature.
• 3. It plays with the relationship between the social, natural, and supernatural worlds.
• 4. It evokes the beauty of a pastoral scene.

Question: Which of the following statements best characterizes American World War II poems ?

• 1. They tend to use traditional rhyme schemes and rhythms, and they avoid free verse.
• 2. They tend to use metaphors and avoid direct descriptive statements.
• 3. They tend to use classical imagery while rejecting romantic tropes.
• 4. They tend to be narrative and confront the reader with stark wartime realities.