Collection 5: The Moderns Test 1
Study Guide
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
1. When speaking of the lifelessness of the night, the speaker compares the evening to
________________________________________________________________
2. How would you describe Prufrock?
3. How can you tell that the poem is a dramatic monologue?
“The Red Wheelbarrow”, “The Great Figure”, “This Is Just to Say”
4. What is emphasized in “The Red Wheelbarrow”?
5. To what does the title “The Great Figure” actually refer?
6. “This Is Just to Say” is both a poem and a __________________________________.
7. The main images in “This Is Just to Say” are ones of __________________ and
_________________.
8. William Carlos Williams’s poems are mainly about __________________________.
9. Williams’s poems can be called imagist because they give what primary importance?
_____________________________
10. What does Williams use in “The Red Wheelbarrow” to describe the images?
11. The images in “The Great Figure” primarily appeal to the senses of ______________
and ___________________.
“The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” and “The Garden”
12. In her loneliness the speaker finds it painful even to watch ____________________.
13. What is the main emotion the speaker expresses in the poem? __________________
14. In “The Garden” the line “Like a skein of loose silk” describes how the woman
____________.
15. Who is “dying piecemeal” in “The Garden”?
16. What is the speaker thinking of doing in “The Garden”?
“what if a much of a which of a wind” and “somewhere i have never
traveled, gladly beyond”
17. What events are described in “what if a much of a which of a wind”?
18. Cumming’s “what if a much of a which of a wind” expresses confidence in what?
19. The poem “somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond” is mainly about how
the speaker feels about whom?
From your notes
20. What is the name of the movement which called for bold experimentation and
wholesale rejection of traditional themes and styles?
21. What are the tenets of the American Dream?
22. What is the name of the writing style which abandoned chronology and attempted to
imitate the moment-by-moment flow of a character’s perceptions and memories?
23. What is the term for a poem in which a character speaks directly to one or more
listeners?
24. What movement focused on reality of life and its surroundings?
25. Which movement did not merely describe objects, but tried to portray the emotional
effects that objects can suggest?
26. Define approximate rhyme.
27. Define free verse.
28. Define internal rhyme.
29. Define paradox.
30. Define rhyme scheme.
31. Define simile.
32. Define synesthesia.
33. Define syntax.
You will need to match descriptions of the poems we read to the poem
titles. Make sure you have read all of the poems.