Contexts of American Poetry - GRE Subject Test: Literature in English

The poet in question is Allen Ginsberg, a leader of the Beats. His most famous work, “Howl,” is an epic poem about minority identities, war, consumerism, sex, and repressive society.

This is Gwendolyn Brooks, author of works such as We Real Cool, Street in Bronzeville, Primer for Blacks, and “Speech to the Young.” Her writing portrays life in inner-city Chicago and encompasses various styles and sensibilities, including jazz influences as well as more formalist verses. She won the Pulitzer in 1950 for her collection titled Annie Allen and was inaugurated as the Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968.

This is Langston Hughes, author of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and “Montage of a Dream Deferred.” Hughes gained acclaim as a poet as well as a social justice advocate, and he was known for writing novels and plays as well as poetry. He helped inaugurate the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s, which brought black and urban perspectives to the forefront of music, art, theater, and writing.

By process of elimination, we can rule out all the poets with experimental aspects to their work. William Carlos Williams embraced innovated forms, e e cummings eschewed traditional orthography, Gertrude Stein focused on sonic pattern to the near-exclusion of semantic meaningfulness, and John Ashbery employed avant-garde forms and syntax. This leaves Hart Crane, who embraced some aspects of Modernist poetry but typically followed the older tradition of lyric verse in his work.

This is Maya Angelou, the famous author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She read “On the Pulse of Morning” at Clinton’s 1993 inauguration ceremony.

The Imagists were known for their emphasis on precision and clarity of diction and images. This movement is linked with the rise of Modernism and includes such founders as Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Amy Lowell, and Carl Sandburg. The British poet Conrad Aiken, on the other hand, was vocally opposed to various aspects of Imagism.

The only poet on this list who has not been the national Poet Laureate is Bukowski. Levine was Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2012, Trethewey was Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014, Dove was Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995, and Brodsky was Poet Laureate from 1991 to 1992.

Of these writers, only Hart Crane was not alive during the Vietnam War. He died in 1932, and the other poets on the list all protested the war in various ways. Some did so through membership in the American Writers Against the Vietnam War (of which Bly was a founder).

Of these five, only Ginsberg does not write work that is routinely and overtly concerned with the natural world, environment, and ecology.

Confessionalism, a poetic movement that focuses on individual, often intensely personal, experiences, typically examines issues of psychology, identity, mental illness, sexuality, and cultural taboos. Berryman, Lowell, Plath, and Sexton are all important Confessionalist poets, but Hilda Doolittle (often referred to as “H.D.”) is an Imagist poet.

Each of the following poets anticipated Modernism with their work: Emily Dickinson, with her experimental punctuation and brevity; Walt Whitman, with his revolutionary portrayals of identity and sexuality and his eschewal of strict meter; Robert Frost, with his clear, precise language and his crisp imagery; and Arthur Rimbaud, for his refusal to romanticize and his use of prose poetry. Poe, however, was a Gothic writer and not a proto-Modernist.

This is the female Imagist poet and prose writer H.D (H.D was the pen name of Hilda Doolittle). H.D was born in 1886, and was active in publishing from 1916 until her death in 1961.

Ezra Pound wrote Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (1920), Amy Lowell (another American Imagist poet) wrote A Dome of Many Coloured Glass (1912), Robert Lowell wrote the Mills of the Kavanaughs (1951), and Marianne Moore wrote Nevertheless (1944).

Helen in Egypt (1961) was H.D's last book of poetry.

H.D. is the pen name of Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961).

Henry Douglas, Henrietta Davenport, and Donald Hughes were not notable American poets at all, but were provided here as alternative names with the initials H.D. The novelist and poet D.H. Lawrence wrote Sons and Lovers (1913).

Helen in Egypt (1961) was H.D's last book of poetry.

In addition to Helen in Egypt, H.D. wrote the poetry collections Sea Garden (1916), Hymen (1921), Hippolytus Temporizes (1927), and Red Roses for Bronze (1932). Sword Blades and Poppy Seed is a 1914 collection by the Imagist poet Amy Lowell.

Helen in Egypt (1961) was H.D's last book of poetry.

H.D. was not a confessional poet, as this movement did not emerge until the late 1950s and early 1960s. Her work, however, took inspiration from Classical Greek poetry and was both Imagist and avant-garde. She was also an outspoken feminist, and works such as Helen in Egypt challenged traditional male voices in poetry.

Helen in Egypt (1961) was H.D's last book of poetry.

Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth (2007)is one of Adrienne Rich’s last poetry collections.

Amy Lowell wrote Legends (1921), Sylvia Plath wrote The Bell Jar (1963), Marianne Moore wrote O to Be a Dragon (1959), and Gwendolyn MacEwen wrote The Rising Fire (1963).

The Colossus and Other Poems is a 1960 collection by Sylvia Plath. All the rest are works by Adrienne Rich.

An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems was published in 1991, The Diamond Cutters, and Other Poems was published in 1955, Diving into the Wreck was published in 1973, The Dream of a Common Language was published in 1978, and Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth was published in 2007.

Given that this is Adrienne Rich’s penultimate poetry collection, it makes sense that it would have been published near the end of Rich’s life (1929-2012). Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth was published in 2007.

In 1997, Rich declined the National Medal of Arts in order to protest a proposition to cut government funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and other government policies.

Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth was published in 2007.