Identification of Poetry - AP English Literature and Composition

This is the Martinican writer Aimé Césaire, an important founder of négritude in French-language literature. Césaire’s work also includes plays such as A Tempest (based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest) and critical essays such as Discourse on Colonialism. Notebook of a Return to the Native Land was first published in 1939 in France.

All of these terms except “gendai-shi” refer to older, more traditional forms of Japanese poetry.

“The Lady with the Dog” is by Anton Chekhov, “The Overcoat” is by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Notes from the Underground is by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Pale Fire is by Vladimir Nabokov.

This is the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.

Only The Labyrinth of Solitude is by Octavio Paz. The other works are all novels by Mexican writer Gabriel Garcia Márquez.

Only Los Heraldos Negros is by Vallejo. The rest are works by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.

This is Pablo Neruda. He employed a variety of poetic forms, including love poetry, epics, historical works, autobiography and political manifestos.

Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet who lived and wrote around the same time as Homer. His best known works of poetry are Theogeny, Works and Days, and Shield of Heracles. Works and Days is centered on a body of agrarian advice and a farmer’s almanac in which the speaker instructs his brother Perses in farming.

The poem is by Gwendolyn Brooks, who was the first African American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize. Brooks experimented with poetic form throughout her career, but her poetry is often concerned with the urban poor of the area of Chicago in which she lived for much of her life. This poem is a favorite of the Lit GRE's and it is extremely short, so you should make it a point to be able to recognize it on first sight.

The poet described is Edward Estlin Cummings, usually known as e. e. cummings. In addition to his poetry, Cummings was known for his paintings, plays, novels and essays.

The poet in question is Allen Ginsberg, a leading figure in the counterculture movement. His most famous work, “Howl,” gave voice to previously unheard minorities and spoke against war, materialism, consumerism, homophobia, and various forms of repression. Its opening lines are frequently quoted, although “Howl” was often censored because of its depictions of homosexual and heterosexual sex acts.

The poet is Sylvia Plath, wife of the British poet Ted Hughes and an important figure in the genre of confessional poetry. Plath’s work is marked by body- and nature-based imagery, depictions of mental illness, and seemingly mundane details from everyday life.

Written more than 4,000 years ago, The Epic of Gilgamesh discusses the works of Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, and the wild man Enkidu. It was written on clay tablets and exists today in various forms, including the Old Babylonian version and the Akkadian version.

The poem, broken into 13 fractured, imagistic sections, was written by American poet Wallace Stevens. Stevens was a leading figure in the American modernist poetry world, and in 1955 he won a Pulitzer for his work. Stevens’ work is marked by a preoccupation with intellectual themes and ideas about human consciousness. Some of his best-known poems include “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” “Anecdote of the Jar,” “The Idea of Order at Key West,” and “Sunday Morning,” as well as “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”

This is the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, who was forced to emigrate from the Soviet Union to the United States in the 1970s. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987 and was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States in 1991.

The poem, T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” is often cited as one of the most important literary works of the twentieth century. It is a polyphonic conglomeration of Arthurian legend, classical myth, modern social satire, and religious vision, and it discusses themes of disillusionment, despondency, death, and mortal judgment.

"April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing": Adapted from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, l.1-2 (1922)

"I will show you fear in a handful of dust": Adapted from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, l.30 (1922)

Sea Grapes is a 1976 poetry collection by Derek Walcott.

This is the St. Lucian poet Derek Walcott, an important post-colonial writer. Omeros was published in 1990 and contains characters with mythical names such as Achille, Hector, and Helen, although the work itself is set primarily in modern-day St. Lucia.

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)

The poet described is Philip Larkin, who was born in Coventry in 1922. His poetry is distinguished by a cynical, forthright treatment of romance, children, sexuality, politics, and daily life.