Poetry Multiple-Choice Practice: AP English Literature Study Guide

CHAPTER 13 Poetry Multiple-Choice Practice

Poetry multiple-choice questions shift rapidly between scales. One question may depend on a single pronoun, while the next asks what the final stanza changes about the poem as a whole. Keep the evidence at the same scale as the question. Local questions should be answered from local evidence. Whole-poem questions need an answer that can survive the entire poem. The practice sets here are designed to make that shift routine. These are practice clusters, not full Section I simulations. On the actual exam, each passage set contains 8 to 13 questions. Some clusters here are shorter so you can switch among poems and practice local-versus-whole-poem decisions without turning this chapter into another full exam. Use Practice Exams 1 and 2 for exact five-set timing and full passage-set length.

Practice Cluster 1

“To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell (1681)

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

Question 1

The opening conditional, “Had we but world enough, and time,” primarily functions to

A. establish an imagined world of unlimited time within which the speaker can construct an extravagantly extended courtship.
B. state a fact about the speaker's actual circumstances.
C. indicate that the speaker and the addressee truly possess unlimited time together.
D. apologize for a delay in writing.

Question 2

The exaggerated timescales (“ten years before the Flood,” “thirty thousand” years) chiefly serve to

A. provide a literal historical timeline.
B. establish that the speaker has lived since biblical times.
C. prove that the addressee has already waited too long.
D. extend the hypothetical abundance of time until the courtship itself becomes deliberately extravagant.

Question 3

The phrase “my vegetable love should grow / Vaster than empires, and more slow” chiefly uses

A. a simile comparing love to one specific plant.
B. personification of an empire.
C. an organic-growth metaphor that makes love seem capable of vast, slow expansion.
D. an allusion to one historical empire.

Question 4

The escalating praise of the addressee's eyes, forehead, breast, and heart chiefly functions to

A. criticize the addressee for demanding praise.
B. prove that the speaker intends to spend the stated number of years on each feature.
C. shift the poem away from persuasion into detached description.
D. turn courtly praise into an intentionally excessive measure of the limitless time imagined in the opening.

Question 5

The closing claim, “Nor would I love at lower rate,” chiefly functions to

A. complete the stanza's extravagant standard of devotion by insisting that even this impossible scale would be appropriate.
B. announce a literal schedule for the courtship.
C. express regret that the speaker did not begin loving sooner.
D. abandon persuasion and shift into detached reflection.

Question 6

The tone of this excerpt is best described as

A. playfully extravagant and rhetorically controlled.
B. sincere and entirely literal.
C. angry and accusatory.
D. mournful and resigned.

Question 7

Which best describes the function of the tightly rhymed couplets in this excerpt?

A. They indicate that the poem was intended as a hymn.
B. They give the speaker's extravagant praise a controlled, quick-moving rhetorical shape.
C. They are unrelated to the speaker's persuasive performance.
D. They create irregular pauses that make the speaker sound unable to control the argument.

Before answering, sort the questions into local and whole-poem categories. Answer the local questions first.

Practice Cluster 2

From “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats (1820)

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Question 8

The urn's address as “bride of quietness” and “foster-child of silence and slow time” primarily establishes

A. the urn as a literal person the speaker has married.
B. a specific historical marriage ceremony depicted on the urn.
C. the speaker's disappointment with the urn's craftsmanship.
D. the urn's paradoxical status as a silent object that nonetheless seems to hold and communicate a story.

Question 9

The rapid sequence of questions in lines 5–10 (“What men or gods,” “What mad pursuit,” “What pipes and timbrels”) primarily conveys

A. the speaker's frustration at the urn's silence.
B. the speaker's active, uncertain attempt to interpret a frozen scene that offers no verbal answer.
C. a catalog of items for sale.
D. the urn's own spoken commentary on itself.

Question 10

The claim that “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter” chiefly introduces

A. a straightforward preference for silence over music.
B. a claim that imagined music would be more technically accomplished than physical music.
C. criticism of the pipers depicted on the urn.
D. a paradox privileging imagined, eternal music over any music that could actually be heard and would therefore end.

Question 11

The address to the “Bold Lover” who can “never, never” kiss primarily conveys

A. the tragedy of eternal frustration alone.
B. a factual account of a couple who later marries.
C. the speaker's anger at the lover's cowardice.
D. a double-edged consolation, in which permanent unfulfillment is paired with permanent, undiminished beauty and desire.

Question 12

The final line of this excerpt, “For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair,” chiefly reframes the earlier “never, never” as

A. purely negative, since the lover cannot ever kiss.
B. a trade-off in which the loss of fulfillment is balanced by the permanence of youth and desire, neither fading with time.
C. evidence that the lover has stopped desiring fulfillment and is satisfied by distance.
D. evidence that the poem ends happily with a literal kiss.

Question 13

Which best describes the function of addressing the urn directly throughout this excerpt?

A. It creates an apostrophe that allows the speaker to project meaning onto a silent object as though it could respond.
B. It proves the urn is capable of literal speech.
C. It is a formal convention with no interpretive significance.
D. It indicates the poem is a letter to a real person.

Question 14

The tension between “sensual ear” and “spirit” in the second stanza primarily conveys

A. a distinction between fleeting physical sensation and a more permanent, imagined mode of perception the urn's silence invites.
B. the speaker's dismissal of all physical experience as worthless.
C. a criticism of musicians who play too loudly.
D. the urn's literal inability to produce sound.

For every whole-excerpt question, test the answer against both stanzas before confirming it. A choice that fits the opening address but conflicts with the second stanza is incomplete.

Practice Cluster 3

“I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—” by Emily Dickinson (1896)

I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air—
Between the Heaves of Storm—

The Eyes around—had wrung them dry—
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset—when the King
Be witnessed—in the Room—

I willed my Keepsakes—Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable—and then it was
There interposed a Fly—

With Blue—uncertain—stumbling Buzz—
Between the light—and me—
And then the Windows failed—and then
I could not see to see—

Question 15

The fly's buzz interrupting the expected solemnity of a deathbed scene primarily functions to

A. confirm that the speaker's death is peaceful and dignified.
B. prove that the speaker is not actually dying.
C. shift attention from the mourners' ceremonial expectation to their irritation with an insect.
D. introduce an incongruous, trivial detail that displaces the “king” (a grander expectation) the mourners awaited.

Question 16

The capitalized abstraction “the King” that mourners expect to witness chiefly represents

A. an actual monarch arriving at the deathbed.
B. the speaker's father.
C. death or a divine, climactic revelation the speaker and witnesses anticipate but that never clearly arrives.
D. a character introduced earlier in a longer poem.

Question 17

The final lines, “And then the Windows failed—and then / I could not see to see,” primarily convey

A. show that the literal windows of the room darken before the speaker dies.
B. a change of location to a different room.
C. the speaker's recovery from illness.
D. the failure of sight itself at the moment of death, rendered through the pun on “see to see.”

Question 18

The poem's use of dashes throughout primarily creates an effect of

A. halting, fragmented perception appropriate to the speaker's failing consciousness.
B. smooth, continuous narrative flow.
C. formal, ceremonial solemnity.
D. comic timing.

“The Darkling Thrush” by Thomas Hardy (1900)

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
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.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

Question 19

The simile comparing bine-stems to “strings of broken lyres” primarily establishes

A. a scene of musical celebration.
B. the speaker's occupation as a musician.
C. an image of ruined or silenced music, consistent with the desolate landscape described around it.
D. a literal description of broken instruments in a field.

Question 20

The contrast between the thrush, described as “frail, gaunt, and small,” and the “full-hearted evensong” it produces chiefly conveys

A. that the thrush's song is weak and unconvincing.
B. a disproportion between the bird's diminished body and the surprising fullness of its joyful sound.
C. the speaker's disbelief that birds can sing.
D. criticism of the thrush's song as poorly timed.

Question 21

The speaker's admission that “I was unaware” of the “blessed Hope” the thrush “knew” primarily reveals

A. the speaker's confidence that no such hope exists.
B. the speaker's anger at the bird.
C. a humbling gap between the bird's apparent access to hope and the speaker's own uncertain, less hopeful perspective.
D. that the poem ends with the speaker gaining a complete explanation.

Question 22

Which best describes the function of the poem's structural movement from bleak landscape to unexpected birdsong?

A. It stages a turn in which an external event complicates, without fully resolving, the desolation established at the poem's opening.
B. It indicates the landscape and the birdsong are unrelated to each other.
C. It proves that winter has ended by the poem's close.
D. It reveals that the speaker imagined the entire scene.

Two shorter poems paired in one set. Apply the same scale discipline to each independently; do not let a reading of the first poem carry over into the second.

Practice Cluster 4

“Recuerdo” by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1920)

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

Question 23

The repeated line “We were very tired, we were very merry—” at the start of both stanzas primarily establishes

A. physical exhaustion that ends the night's activities.
B. a refrain meant to be sung by a chorus of characters.
C. the speakers' disagreement about how the night went.
D. a paired, almost contradictory emotional state the poem treats as characteristic of the whole night and lets both moods coexist.

Question 24

The image “the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold” chiefly contributes to the memory by

A. measuring the sunrise as though its brightness could be counted precisely.
B. turning dawn into a religious omen that changes the speakers' beliefs.
C. making the sunrise feel tangible, abundant, and close to ordinary life, consistent with the poem's affectionate memory of small experiences.
D. proving that the night has become unpleasant once daylight arrives.

Question 25

The catalog of small, concrete actions (looking into a fire, eating fruit, lying on a hilltop) primarily serves to

A. prove the speakers accomplished nothing of significance that night.
B. criticize the speakers for wasting their time.
C. ground the poem's larger emotional claim in specific, remembered, sensory detail.
D. establish the poem's setting as entirely indoors.

Question 26

The poem's title, “Recuerdo” (Spanish for “I remember” or “memory”), primarily signals that the poem should be read as

A. a live, real-time account of events as they happen.
B. a retrospective act of memory, coloring even mundane details with the warmth of recollection.
C. a translation from an original Spanish-language poem.
D. a letter addressed to a specific person named Recuerdo.

From “Patterns” by Amy Lowell (1916)

I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.

My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whale-bone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

Question 27

The speaker's description of herself as “too, a rare / Pattern” primarily establishes

A. pride in her fashionable appearance with no further significance.
B. an identification between the speaker and the rigid, decorative structures she moves through, extending beyond her clothing.
C. the speaker's role as a fashion designer.
D. criticism of the garden's landscaping.

Question 28

The statement “For my passion / Wars against the stiff brocade” primarily conveys

A. the speaker's satisfaction with her rigid dress.
B. a literal physical struggle with a garment that does not fit.
C. an internal conflict between the speaker's constrained outward form and an unexpressed inner feeling.
D. the speaker's indifference to her own emotions.

Question 29

The final revelation that the speaker's intended husband is “dead, / Fighting with the Duke in Flanders” chiefly reframes the earlier garden imagery as

A. a controlled, patterned surface concealing grief that the poem has been withholding until this point.
B. unrelated to the poem's ending.
C. evidence that the speaker never loved him.
D. a celebration of military victory.

Question 30

The closing question, “Christ! What are patterns for?” chiefly functions to

A. resolve the poem's tension with a clear answer.
B. return the poem to its opening tone unchanged.
C. indicate the speaker's religious devotion.
D. break the poem's earlier composed, decorative language with a raw, unpatterned outburst of grief and protest.

A denser pair, including at least one question resolvable only from older or unusual syntax. Recover the grammar before selecting an answer.

Practice Cluster 5

“When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer” by Walt Whitman (1865)

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Question 31

The repeated “When” clauses in the poem's first four lines primarily function to

A. establish a single moment the poem will interrupt without further elaboration.
B. accumulate the accoutrements of formal, quantified learning before the poem's turn away from them.
C. indicate a list of unrelated events.
D. suggest the speaker cannot remember the sequence of events clearly.

Question 32

The phrase “the proofs, the figures” chiefly conveys

A. the speaker's admiration for mathematical precision.
B. the speaker's own profession as a mathematician.
C. evidence that the astronomer is dishonest.
D. an impersonal, abstracted mode of knowledge the poem will contrast with direct experience.

Question 33

The phrase “How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick” primarily conveys

A. a literal physical illness requiring medical attention.
B. a restlessness the speaker cannot fully explain, causing the speaker to leave the lecture.
C. the speaker's agreement with the astronomer's conclusions.
D. boredom caused by poor lighting in the room.

Question 34

The shift from the crowded “lecture-room” to the speaker standing alone under “the mystical moist night-air” primarily enacts

A. the speaker's rejection of astronomy as a field of study.
B. a simple change of scenery with no further significance.
C. a move from abstracted, mediated knowledge to direct, unmediated experience.
D. a return to the same lecture-room described earlier.

Question 35

The poem's final image, looking “up in perfect silence at the stars,” chiefly contrasts with the earlier lecture-room scene through its

A. greater volume and “applause.”
B. identical content, since both scenes describe the same stars.
C. wordless, unmediated quality, replacing explanation with direct perception.
D. shift attention away from the sky and toward the people in the lecture room.

Question 36

The poem's long, accumulating lines in its first half, followed by shorter lines at its close, primarily create an effect of

A. confusion about the poem's structure.
B. an enactment, at the level of form, of moving from crowded accumulation to spare, quiet clarity.
C. a printing error uncorrected in later editions.
D. no meaningful relationship between form and content.

Question 37

The grammatical movement from four repeated “When” clauses to “Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself” chiefly functions to

A. release the speaker from the accumulated lecture-room sequence into self-directed physical movement.
B. show that the lecture has ended at its scheduled time.
C. prove that the astronomer has asked the speaker to leave.
D. begin a second lecture delivered outdoors.

Question 38

Which best describes the poem's overall argument about knowledge?

A. That formal, quantified study is the only valid way of knowing.
B. That astronomy is a fraudulent field of study.
C. That direct, silent experience can offer something the lecture's proofs and figures do not.
D. That the speaker prefers indoor settings to outdoor ones.

A full set at exam pace, timed without interruption. The distractor logic from Chapter 10 applies here without being retaught.

Answer Key

Complete all five practice clusters before checking the key. This chapter is not a five-set Section I simulation: several clusters are deliberately shorter, and two place short poems back to back. Use the full practice exams for exact five-set timing.

Practice Cluster 1: To His Coy Mistress

Show the answers and explanations

1. A. The conditional opens a hypothetical in which time is abundant enough for limitless courtship. C mistakes the imagined premise for the speaker's actual situation.

2. D. The escalating durations expand the imagined courtship far beyond ordinary human time. A is the strongest literal trap; the numbers are rhetorical, not chronological.

3. C. The speaker imagines love as something that grows organically across immense space and time. A is tempting because 'vegetable' evokes plants, but the phrase does not compare love to one named plant.

4. D. The body-part catalog stretches praise across impossible durations, extending the opening fantasy. B is the strongest literal trap because the numbers are part of the exaggeration, not a practical plan.

5. A. The line caps the hypothetical by treating extravagant devotion as the minimum fitting standard. B literalizes a deliberately impossible scale.

6. A. The precise couplets and escalating hyperbole make the praise controlled and playful. B ignores the impossible scale of the imagined courtship.

7. B. The regular couplets discipline the hyperbole and keep the argument moving. D reverses the formal effect; the rhyme creates control and rejects disorder.

Practice Cluster 2: Ode on a Grecian Urn

Show the answers and explanations

8. D. Deciding evidence: The paradoxical address treats a silent object as though it holds and can communicate a story. Strongest distractor: A. the urn as a literal person the speaker has married. It goes one step beyond what the cited evidence actually establishes. Failure type: inference.

9. B. The rapid questions dramatize active, uncertain interpretation; the poem supplies no settled answer. Strongest distractor: A. the speaker's frustration at the urn's silence. Failure type: precision.

10. D. Deciding evidence: The paradox privileges imagined, permanent music over sound that would occur in time and end. Strongest distractor: B. keeps the comparison about artistic quality, which the lines do not discuss. Failure type: inference.

11. D. Deciding evidence: Eternal frustration is paired with eternal, undiminished beauty as a double-edged consolation. Strongest distractor: B. a factual account of a couple who later marries. It is close at the level of topic or denotation but misses the more precise effect of the quoted word or phrase. Failure type: precision.

12. B. Deciding evidence: The line balances lost fulfillment against permanent youth and desire. Strongest distractor: C. goes too far because the lover's unfulfilled desire remains central to the scene. Failure type: degree.

13. A. Deciding evidence: Direct address to the urn is apostrophe, projecting responsiveness onto a silent object. Strongest distractor: D. It indicates the poem is a letter to a real person. It identifies a real feature or association but assigns that feature the wrong job in this passage. Failure type: function.

14. A. Deciding evidence: The contrast separates fleeting sensory experience from a more permanent imagined mode of perception. Strongest distractor: B. the speaker's dismissal of all physical experience as worthless. It is close at the level of topic or denotation but misses the more precise effect of the quoted word or phrase. Failure type: precision.

Practice Cluster 3: I heard a Fly buzz / The Darkling Thrush

Show the answers and explanations

15. D. Deciding evidence: The ordinary fly displaces the grand “King” the mourners expect, making the death scene resistant to ceremonial meaning. Strongest distractor: C. invents an emotional response from the mourners that the poem never gives. Failure type: inference.

16. C. Deciding evidence: “The King” stands in for the climactic revelation of death that never clearly arrives. Strongest distractor: B. the speaker's father. It goes one step beyond what the cited evidence actually establishes. Failure type: inference.

17. D. Deciding evidence: The doubled “see to see” turns the ending into the failure of perception itself. Strongest distractor: A. literalizes “Windows” and misses the line's representation of consciousness shutting down. Failure type: precision.

18. A. Deciding evidence: The dashes create halting, fragmented perception fitting the speaker's failing consciousness. Strongest distractor: C. formal, ceremonial solemnity. It goes one step beyond what the cited evidence actually establishes. Failure type: inference.

19. C. Deciding evidence: The broken-lyre simile evokes ruined music consistent with the desolate scene. Strongest distractor: D. a literal description of broken instruments in a field. It goes one step beyond what the cited evidence actually establishes. Failure type: inference.

20. B. Deciding evidence: The bird's frail body contrasts with the surprising fullness of its song. Strongest distractor: C. the speaker's disbelief that birds can sing. It is close at the level of topic or denotation but misses the more precise effect of the quoted word or phrase. Failure type: precision.

21. C. Deciding evidence: The speaker's admitted unawareness marks a gap between the bird's apparent hope and his own uncertainty. Strongest distractor: A. the speaker's confidence that no such hope exists. It goes one step beyond what the cited evidence actually establishes. Failure type: inference.

22. A. Deciding evidence: The movement from desolation to unexpected song complicates, without fully resolving, the opening mood. Strongest distractor: C. It proves that winter has ended by the poem's close. It identifies a real feature or association but assigns that feature the wrong job in this passage. Failure type: function.

Practice Cluster 4: Recuerdo / Patterns

Show the answers and explanations

23. D. The refrain keeps fatigue and delight active at the same time. A notices the fatigue but wrongly treats it as the end of the night's pleasure. Failure: degree.

24. C. The metaphor turns sunrise into something almost touchable and domestic, extending the poem's pleasure in concrete remembered details. A is the strongest distractor because “bucketful” sounds measurable, but the image is imaginative, not quantitative. Failure type: function.

25. C. The remembered actions are ordinary and precise, which is exactly how the poem gives emotional weight to the night. A mistakes smallness of action for lack of significance. Failure: function.

26. B. The title frames the scene as recollection, so the concrete details arrive already shaped by memory. A ignores the retrospective frame. Failure: perspective.

27. B. Calling herself a 'pattern' links her body and dress to the rigid garden order surrounding her. A notices appearance but stops before the larger identification. Failure: scope.

28. C. The verb 'wars' places inner passion in conflict with the restrictive brocade. B literalizes the struggle and misses the emotional opposition. Failure: precision.

29. A. The death revelation makes the earlier order and decoration look like a surface maintained over grief. D reverses the poem's emotional direction. Failure: function.

30. D. The abrupt exclamation breaks the controlled decorative language with grief and protest. A fails because the question is unresolved, not answered. Failure: function.

Practice Cluster 5: When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

Show the answers and explanations

31. B. The repeated 'When' clauses accumulate the machinery of formal study before the poem turns away from it. A understates the deliberate accumulation. Failure: structure.

32. D. Proofs and figures represent quantified, mediated knowledge that the ending contrasts with direct perception. A treats the words as praise the speaker never gives. Failure: inference.

33. B. 'Unaccountable' names a reaction the speaker cannot explain and that pushes him out of the room. A turns figurative unease into unsupported medical diagnosis. Failure: degree.

34. C. The movement is from charts, numbers, lecture, and applause to solitary contact with the night sky. A overstates the poem into rejection of astronomy itself. Failure: degree.

35. C. The closing image replaces explanation and applause with wordless direct perception. D shifts the focus back to other people, which reverses the ending's solitude.

36. B. The poem's form moves from long accumulative clauses toward shorter, quieter motion and perception. D denies a relationship the syntax visibly creates. Failure: function.

37. A. The repeated “When” clauses hold the speaker inside an accumulating sequence of proofs, figures, charts, and applause; “Till rising and gliding out” breaks that pattern with motion of his own. B is the strongest distractor because the departure follows the lecture sequence, but nothing says the lecture itself has ended. Failure type: structure.

38. C. The poem claims direct experience can supply something absent from quantified lecture-room knowledge. B turns a personal contrast into an attack on the entire field. Failure: degree.

Correction Log

Question ______ Correct answer ______ Distractor chosen ______ Error type: scope / function / degree / inference / precision / complexity ______ Deciding clue ______