Reading poetry (Part 1): practice

This poem, "Advice, Too Late," was written for practice. The speaker is a woman.

You will not listen, so I'll keep this short.

Stop practicing your signature. No one

will ask for it. Stop waiting by the phone

for the call that will come, but not from him,

5and not that year. The bangs were a mistake.

The friend who laughs at you on the bus

will be the one who holds your hand at the funeral,

so be kind to her anyway. Be kind.

And when our father asks you to come fishing

10at five on a Saturday, cold, with nothing biting,

and you say no, you'd rather sleep, and he says

all right, all right, another time,

get up. Get up. I know you won't. Get up.

Question 1

In lines 3 to 5, the speaker says the call "will come, but not from him, / and not that year" and that "The bangs were a mistake." These details show that the speaker

Question 2

The tone of lines 1 to 5, including "The bangs were a mistake," is best described as

Question 3

How does the second stanza change the poem's tone?

Question 4

In line 13, the words "I know you won't" suggest that the speaker

Question 5

Which idea is most central to the poem?

This poem, "The Apprentice," was written for practice. The speaker is learning to work iron in a blacksmith's forge.

All morning the hammer: clang and clang and clang,

the bright bar beaten, bent, and beaten back,

sparks skittering like startled birds

across the black floor of the forge.

5I wanted to be done by noon. I wanted

the hook, the hinge, the finished gate,

not this. The old man let me rage.

He said the iron does not care

how fast you want it. Watch the color.

10Cherry, then straw, then the blue of a vein.

Strike when it tells you. Wait when it doesn't.

By evening the bar had become a latch,

plain as a word, and it lay on the anvil

cooling, saying nothing, while I learned

15the hardest part of a temper is letting it go.

Question 6

The repeated sounds in lines 1 and 2 mainly help to

Question 7

Lines 5 to 7 run across a stanza break to the words "not this." The effect is to

Question 8

In lines 8 to 11, the old man speaks of the iron as if it "does not care" and "tells you" when to strike. This personification suggests that

Question 9

How does the final stanza (lines 12 to 15) contrast with lines 1 to 4?

Question 10

In line 15, the word "temper" is most likely used to refer to

This poem, "Booth Seven," was written for practice. The speaker collects tolls on a bridge.

Don't think I watch them. I take the coins,

I lift the gate, I say good night.

That's the job. A man in a gray coat

crosses at six-ten every evening, Tuesdays

5a little later, since his mother moved.

A woman in a green car sings with the radio

and stops when she reaches me, as if

a song were something you could be fined for.

There's a boy who drives his grandfather's truck

10and counts out pennies like a man defusing

something. I don't keep track. Why would I?

They are all going somewhere I am not.

The river doesn't care who crosses it,

and neither do I. On the night of the ice storm

15the gray coat didn't come, and I stayed on

an hour past my shift, for the overtime.

Question 11

The details in lines 3 to 10 affect the reader's view of the speaker's claims in line 1 and line 11 by

Question 12

The comparison in lines 7 and 8, "as if / a song were something you could be fined for," suggests that the woman

Question 13

In lines 10 and 11, describing the boy as counting pennies "like a man defusing / something" suggests that the boy

Question 14

In lines 14 to 16, the speaker's explanation that he stayed late "for the overtime" most likely

Question 15

Which statement best expresses a theme of the poem?

This poem, "The Late Ferry," was written for practice.

I stood at the rail the whole way over,

the way my father did, as if the wind

owed him something he meant to collect.

The town came up out of the dark in pieces:

5the water tower first, its name still painted

in the letters I learned to read from,

then the cannery roof, then the steeple

with its one lit window like a held breath.

I had kept it all for twenty years

10the way you keep a coin in a coat pocket,

turning it over without looking,

sure of its face by touch alone.

But the dock had moved a hundred yards north.

The cannery was a hotel now, glass to the eaves,

15and the men on the pier were young and laughing

at something I would not have understood.

Even the gulls seemed to be new gulls.

I walked up the hill with my one bag

and found I was not disappointed, exactly.

20A coin, after all, is made to be spent.

Question 16

In lines 2 and 3, the phrase "as if the wind / owed him something he meant to collect" suggests that the father faced the wind

Question 17

The comparison in lines 9 to 12 suggests that the speaker's memory of the town had been

Question 18

How does the third stanza (lines 13 to 17) relate to the first two stanzas?

Question 19

In line 19, the word "exactly" in "I was not disappointed, exactly" signals that the speaker

Question 20

How does line 20 develop a central idea of the poem?

This poem, "Inventory," was written for practice. The speaker and her brother are clearing out the house of an aunt who has died.

One blue bowl, chipped at the lip.

Forty years of seed catalogs, the corners soft.

A drawer of string too short to use,

saved by someone who believed in later.

5Six keys to doors that no one here can name.

A radio tuned to the station that played

the farm report at noon, the hog prices

read out like scripture to an empty kitchen.

We sort it into boxes: keep, give, throw.

10My brother holds the bowl up to the window

and the chip catches light like a small moon.

Throw, he says, and doesn't put it down.

Question 21

In line 4, the phrase "someone who believed in later" suggests that the aunt

Question 22

The first stanza is built mostly from phrases without main verbs. This structure mainly

Question 23

In lines 7 and 8, the simile "read out like scripture to an empty kitchen" suggests that the farm report

Question 24

In line 11, the image of the chip that "catches light like a small moon" suggests that

Question 25

Line 12, "Throw, he says, and doesn't put it down," develops a central idea of the poem by showing that

This poem, "The Last Keeper," was written for practice. The speaker tends a lighthouse that is about to be run by machine.

For thirty years I climbed these iron stairs

at dusk to trim the wick and wind the weight,

and wrote the passing ships, and said my prayers

to fogs that rolled in early or in late.

5Tomorrow comes a man with a machine

that turns itself, and never needs to sleep,

and never needs a keeper in between

the evening and the morning on the deep.

So be it. Let the clockwork have the light.

10The ships will never know whose hand is gone;

they only ask the beam to cut the night,

and it will turn, and they will travel on.

The logbook says I kept the light. That's true.

It does not say the light kept me there too.

Question 26

Line 9, "So be it. Let the clockwork have the light," marks a shift in the poem from

Question 27

In line 11, the metaphor "cut the night" presents the lighthouse beam as

Question 28

The repetition of "never needs" in lines 6 and 7 mainly emphasizes

Question 29

Line 13 says the speaker kept the light. In line 14, the words "the light kept me there too" suggest that the light

Question 30

Which statement best expresses a theme developed in the poem?

The following poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, "We Wear the Mask," was published in 1896.

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

5And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

10We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

15 We wear the mask!

Question 31

In line 1, describing the mask as one "that grins and lies" presents it as

Question 32

In line 3, the phrase "This debt we pay to human guile" suggests that wearing the mask is

Question 33

In lines 6 to 9, the question "Why should the world be over-wise, / In counting all our tears and sighs?" is best read as

Question 34

In lines 10 and 11, the speaker turns to address "great Christ." This shift reveals that

Question 35

The refrain "We wear the mask" ends the second stanza with a period and the poem with an exclamation point. The change helps develop the central idea by suggesting that

The following poem by Thomas Hardy, "The Darkling Thrush," was first published in 1900, as one century was ending and another beginning.

I LEANT upon a coppice gate

When Frost was spectre-gray,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

The weakening eye of day.

5The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

Like strings from broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

10 The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

Was shrunken hard and dry,

15And every spirit upon earth

Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice outburst among

The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

20 Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom.

25So little cause for carollings

Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

30 His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

And I was unaware.

Question 36

In lines 5 and 6, the simile comparing the bine-stems to "strings from broken lyres" suggests a world in which

Question 37

In lines 9 to 12, the speaker presents the landscape as

Question 38

How does the third stanza (lines 17 to 24) change the direction of the poem?

Question 39

In lines 21 and 22, the thrush is described as "aged," "frail, gaunt, and small," in "blast-beruffled plume." These details matter mainly because they

Question 40

Which statement best describes the speaker's view at the end of the poem (lines 25 to 32)?

Reading poetry (Part 1)

Reading questions