English I Honors Unit 4 Study Guide 1. Which term designates poems that tell a story and include characters, settings, and a specific atmosphere, or overall mood? 2. Because poetry often contains figurative language, it is often helpful to do what when you are reading a poem? 3. What is the most frightening effect of war on the world as it is described in “The Horses”? 4. A flashback in a narrative describes events that occurred before the time of the main story. In “The Horses,” what is the subject of a flashback? 5. What does the speaker in “The Horses” mean when he says that if they “speak again” on the radio, “we will not listen”? 6. Read these lines from “The Horses”: “We heard a distant tapping on the road,/ A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again/And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.” Edwin Muir probably included these details in order to _________________ 7. At the end of “The Horses,” what is the speaker's tone, or attitude toward his subject? 8. What is most likely the message of “Casey at the Bat”? 9. What distinguishes narrative poetry from other types of poetry is that narrative poetry 10. Sum up the main conflict in “Casey at the Bat”. 11. What does the umpire do in “Casey at the Bat”? 12. Give a situation that is similar to the plot of “Casey at the Bat”. 13. Define paraphrasing. 14. Why is paraphrasing especially useful when you are reading poetry? 15. In “Twister Hits Houston,” where was the speaker when the cyclone hit? 16. Read the following lines from “Twister Hits Houston”: [Papa] said the twister ripped/the big black oak to splinter,/tossed a green sedan into his garden,/and banged the back door/like a mad cat wanting in.” If you use these details to picture the action, what would best describe the twister? 17. What best describes the mood at the end of “Twister Hits Houston”? 18. In “Twister Hits Houston,” Cisneros repeats several details in the poem in order to 19. Summarize the message of “Dream Deferred”. 20. What figure of speech does Langston Hughes use in the following lines? “Does it dry up/like a raisin in the sun?” 21. In “Dreams,” when the speaker says that “Life is a broken­winged bird / That cannot fly,” the figure of speech is an example of 22. What the theme, or underlying message, of “Dreams”? 23. A paradox is a figure of speech that 24. Which figure of speech do these lines illustrate? “Where deer stroll peacefully/past computers/as if they were flowers/with spinning blossoms.” 25. In “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers—,” Emily Dickinson implies that hope 26. Paraphrase the line “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers—”. 27. The speaker of “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers—” evidently believes that hope 28. In “The War Against the Trees,” the line “All day long the hireling engines charged the trees” illustrates which figure of speech 29. Read the following excerpt from “The War Against the Trees”: “ 7 Forsythia­forays and hydrangea­raids/8 Were but preliminaries to a war/9 Against the great­grandfathers of the town,/10 So freshly lopped and maimed./11 They struck and struck again,/12 And with each elm a century went down.” Where should you not pause when reading these lines? 30. In “The War Against the Trees,” who or what are “the great­grandfathers of the town” in the lines “Were but preliminaries to a war / Against the great­grandfathers of the town”? 31. In “The War Against the Trees,” what best describes the speaker's tone, or attitude toward his subject? 32. When the speaker in Emily Dickinson's poem declares in the opening lines that “Much Madness is divinest Sense— / To a discerning Eye,” what figure of speech does the poet use? 33. At the end of “Much Madness is divinest Sense,” the speaker's tone might best be described as 34. Metaphor differs chiefly from simile in that metaphor 35. Why do poets often write sentences that span several lines? 36. What kind of feeling does Cummings convey with the rhyme and rhythm in “maggie and milly and molly and may”? 37. In “maggie and milly and molly and may,” when “molly was chased by a horrible thing,” the thing she saw was probably a 38. In Cummings's poem, one girl comes home with a stone “as small as a world and as large as alone.” The poet intends to suggest that the girl 39. What is the meaning of “maggie and milly and molly and may”? 40. When Shakespeare says that “All the world's a stage” and continues that idea in the next four lines, what figure of speech is he using? 41. In “The Seven Ages of Man,” what best conveys the speaker's description of the infant “mewling and puking in the nurse's arms”? 42. In “The Seven Ages of Man,” calling the soldier “jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel” is another way of saying that he is 43. The reader can infer that the speaker in “The Seven Ages of Man” finds people 44. Read the following lines from “The Seven Ages of Man”: “And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,/And shining morning face, creeping like snail/Unwillingly to school.” Paraphrase these lines. 45. Paraphrase the line, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood”? 46. The lines “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference” contain figurative language that compares choosing one road over another to 47. When the speaker in “The Road Not Taken” predicts that he will someday tell about his decision “with a sigh,” what does he mean? 48. What is the rhyme scheme in this stanza from “The Road Not Taken”? “And both that morning equally lay/In leaves no step had trodden black/.Oh, I kept the first for another day!/Yet knowing how way leads on to way,/I doubted if I should ever come back.” 49. Describe the overall mood in “The Road Not Taken”? 50. Define paraphrase (I know you’ve already done this once) 51. Define the term meter. 52. In “Macavity: The Mystery Cat,” which lines features a humorous contrast between the formal diction of the speaker and the actual behavior of Macavity? 53. In “Macavity: The Mystery Cat,” which line is humorous because it combines serious details with ridiculous, amusing details? 54. Define alliteration. 55. The line “Swish of strings like silk” illustrates what poetical device? 56. In “Slam, Dunk, & Hook,” the lines “We outmaneuvered the footwork / Of bad angels” mean that 57. In “Slam, Dunk, & Hook,” Komunyakaa writes that when “Sonny Boy's mama died / He played nonstop all day, so hard / Our backboard splintered.” Why did it splinter? 58. What is the best way to understand a poem's text and appreciate the poet's artistry? 59. In “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll, what draws the boy into the “tulgey wood”? 60. What makes “Jabberwocky” a humorous poem? 61. In “Jabberwocky,” the word galumphing is an example of what poetical device? 62. In “Jabberwocky,” what sound devices is exemplified in the line, “Come to my arms, my beamish boy”? 63. What is the best description of Lewis Carroll's “Jabberwocky”? 64. In “The Bells,” what emotions does Edgar Allan Poe focus on? 65. In “The Bells,” the line “How they clang and clash and roar!” illustrates which sound device? 66. To which of the five senses do these lines from “The Bells” appeal? “How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle/In the icy air of night!/While the stars, that oversprinkle/All the heavens, seem to twinkle/With a crystalline delight” 67. How does “The Bells” change? 68. What is Poe's primary purpose in “The Bells”? 69. What is lyric poetry? 70. What word best describes the speaker's mood in Bash?'s haiku about temple bells and fragrant blossoms? 71. When the speaker in Chiyojo's first haiku asks the dragonfly catcher, “How far have you gone today / In your wandering?”, what is the poet expressing? 72. Haiku is often about 73. In Sonnet 30 by William Shakespeare, what is the cause of the speaker's unhappiness? 74. The last lines of Shakespeare's Sonnet 30 (“But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, / All losses are restored and sorrows end.”) are an example of what? 75. What word best describes the mood of the speaker at the end of Sonnet 30? 76. Both sonnets and haiku are examples of which type of poetry? 77. To which senses does the imagery in these lines from “Blackberry Eating” appeal? “I love to go out in late September/among the fat, overripe, icy black blackberries/to eat blackberries for breakfast” 78. In “Blackberry Eating,” to what does the speaker compare the ripe berries that fall “almost unbidden” to his tongue? 79. From the subject matter, imagery, and tone in “Blackberry Eating,” it is reasonable to infer that the speaker is what? 80. Which aspect of writing does the speaker celebrate in “Blackberry Eating”? 81. Define pallor 82. Define deferred 83. Define preliminaries 84. Define discerning 85. Define woeful 86. Define diverged 87. Define bafflement 88. Define metaphysical 89. Define woes