I want to read a wide variety of poetry by poets who exemplified and represented their eras.

I am taking the SAT Literature subject exam next week.

During the test, we don't require profound psychological insights into the anapest meter. We require a general understanding of the meaning of the poem, prose or drama excerpt.



For eg., in a mock test, the following poem appeared:
Madman's Song

BETTER to see your cheek grown hollow,
Better to see your temple worn,
Than to forget to follow, follow,
After the sound of a silver horn.

Better to bind your brow with willow
And follow, follow until you die,
Than to sleep with your head on a golden pillow,
Nor lift it up when the hunt goes by.

Better to see your cheek grow sallow
And your hair grown gray, so soon, so soon,
Than to forget to hallo, hallo,
After the milk-white hounds of the moon.

One of the questions was, why is "silver" used in conjunction with horn?
A)to signify inferiority to gold.
B)to show deceptiveness of worldly possessions.
C)to alliterate with sound
D)etc.
E)etc.

The answer is C.

I did not have a general sense of the poem so I chose something else.
I understood the mere literal meaning, but I did not understand what it signified:
Persistence,Contempt against worldliness etc.?




My favourite poet is Shakespeare, and I've read some H.W.Longfellow, Tolkien, Frost, Silverstein, Donne,Dickinson,Wordsworth. Little of Shelley,Keats,Yeats, Tennyson,Gray,Eliot. Difficult to understand e.e.cummings. Also read sporadically the famous poems.(I think I am singularly unaccustomed to modern poetry.)

BTW, all this is self-study since English is not my major.


Therefore, I want to get used to a variety of themes and dictions. Which poets and poems do you recommend?

Thanks in advance!

Ice, my suggestion would be to get a test preparation booklet and study the questions in that booklet. The test preparers are the same publishers who publish the test preparation booklets so the same questions often appear in the tests and booklets. Here's a sample: [www.collegeboard.com]


p.s. A week is probably not enough time to prepare for this exam, but knowledge and familiarity with the question format will save you time, so it is still worth your time to study one of these test preparation booklets.

Les



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2006 01:55PM by lg.

Thanks for the prompt reply!

Les, I have already been through a test preparation book by Kaplan, and I can't find any others (because they are all out of stock!). The same questions don't appear in the test booklets as in the tests; they use new questions each time!

I've been studying the test booklet for 2 weeks, and reading a wide range of literature.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2006 03:06PM by Iceberg.

>they use new questions each time!

Wrong, the test publishers would love you to think that. The fact is that many of the basic questions appear over and over again. Go to a college library and check out one of the many college preparation booklets, or study it there.


Les

Odd time for such a question to appear, since I decided to take some sample SATs with a library book this month. My percentages for the literary questions were consistently into the 90s, but I sucked big time with the math questions, only some 43% correct. You don't use it, you lose it!

"One of the questions was, why is "silver" used in conjunction with horn?
A)to signify inferiority to gold.
B)to show deceptiveness of worldly possessions.
C)to alliterate with sound
D)etc.
E)etc.

The answer is C. "

Sadly, this answer is incorrect! Silver is not alliterative with horn. Sound and silver have such a quality, so perhaps it was typed wrong above? How this fits the general understanding of the meaning of the poem is even less clear. I would be interested in learning what the two 'etc.' answers were.

Personally, I would not attempt to study a particular poet in order to prepare for such questions. There are entirely too many and techniques too varied. Instead, search for sites that teach prosody itself. And there are several excellent texts available, the best for beginners to my mind being Western Wind by John Frederick Nims. A copy of that and his Harper's Anthology of Poetry have been close to hand for years now. Continually rich sources of new knowledge.



[www.danagioia.net]

[scrawlmark.org]

[tinyurl.com]

Deceptive question

as were many, as i recall

Hard to say, i was hung over when i took it

>The fact is that many of the basic questions appear over and over again.

Les, that is a novel idea to me. I have managed to borrow another test book and I'll see if indeed there's a noticeable pattern.

Hugh,I'll look up the original phrasing for the question(I typed it from memory).Thank you for the great advice and the very,very interesting sites .

Iceberg, I didn't mean to imply that the test itself does not change, it does. I believe it now has a writing component which was not there a few years ago.

But there is a store of knowledge inherent in grading the test that makes a bank of questions and their answers an invaluable tool for conquering the test. In other words, they can't possibly make every version of the test different, hence there must be similarity to make the test valid for all students.

The challenge then is to try to find the "basis" of knowledge on which most of the questions rest. That type of strategy might take years to master, which is why the test supposedly is a measure of the entire high school academic preparation of a student.

There are several methods used to attack the test preparation, the best is probably a good academically challenging high school curriculum,
but even without that you can give yourself an edge by taking the test more than once to become "test wise". There are good prep booklets out there, Kaplan is probably as good as any. There are also some online sources such as this one: [www.sparknotes.com] which may help to give you an edge.

Here are some general guidelines for taking the SAT, or any major academic test:

1. Rest well the night before the test, don't try to "cram" the night before a test like this. It's a long test, you'll need to be alert.

2. Know where you're going. Take a "dry run" to see how long it takes to get to the test site. Find out parking, or transportation details in advance based on the day of the week you will be tested (usually Saturday). Know which building and which room(s) will be used. Have any necessary identification or registration materials handy.

3. Eat breakfast, you will need energy and there are only a couple of short breaks for the 3-4 hour exam.

4. Arrive at the test site early so that you will be relaxed and comfortable when the test begins. (10-15 minutes should be enough.)

5. Once the test begins listen to any verbal instructions and read the test instructions carefully.

6. Manage your time wisely. Know how much time is allotted to each section. Don't waste time on impossible questions, skip the hardest questions so that you can score on a possibly easier question on the same page. This is especially important in the math section. There you can usually tell immediately whether or not you're familiar with the concept required to solve the question.

7. If you can eliminate, just 1 choice from a multiple choice question then guess. But only if you can eliminate that choice based on some knowledge. Blind guessing actually works against you.

8. Check your answers, be sure that the numbers for the questions match the numbers for your marks on the answer sheet(s).

9. On the written sample, do not waste too much time deciding what to write. Usually the first topic (argument) which comes to mind will be the most compelling. Remember that you will be scored on how well you present your argument, not on what opinion you have on the subject.
9. a) State your opinion/topic clearly in the opening paragraph of your essay. Organize your essay, spend some time planning so that your essay is easy to follow. Use a word map, or outline to help organize your thoughts.
9. b) Do not use words/ phrases with which you are not familiar. Keep it simple and direct. Write as if you were writing to the editor of a newspaper, not as if you were writing a letter to a friend.

10. Proofread, make sure your essay says what you intended it to say. If you're not sure, reread it and/or revise it. But make sure the final copy is clear in its meaning.

11. Relax, you'll do better knowing that you've prepared. Just reading one prep question puts you ahead of 50 per cent of the people taking the test. Reading these instructions puts you ahead of a few more.


Les



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2006 05:59PM by lg.

Hugh, here's the original question:

What is the effect of using "silver" to describe the "horn"?
A)To imply that the horn is not as valuable as a golden horn.
B)To foreshadow any item that may be used in the "hunt".
C)To be alliterative with the word "sound".
D)To indicate that the image would be bright.
E)To symbolize the beauty of wealth.


Les, thanks for the advice.BTW you're confusing SAT 2 with SAT 1. SAT 2, which I'm taking doesn't have a writing or essay section anymore. Sadly, SAT 2 Literature doesn't have any online resources like SAT 1 does.

On the mock test I'm getting 780/800.Take that, collegeboard!

Excellent - nice woik! The thing that annoyed me most about the SATs is the ambiguity of the questions, and how close a decision a lot of the choices are. Takes a lot of time to balance the scales and decide which answer really does best respond to the question posed. How to cope? Move quickly through the ones you know right away, then go back and tackle the toughies.

Take the question just mentioned, for example. Do we really know that the author only chose the word silver to be alliterative with the word sound? Of course not! His main idea might very well have been to portray a bright image, and only secondarily chose silver because it hissed nicely with the word sound. The fact that he has all that other alliteration (B-sounds and F-sounds) in nearby lines will finally make one choose the C option.

And there's that word foreshadowing again - recently came up in another discussion about Mary Shelley's use of omens in Frankenstein.

There isn't much to choose from in terms of preparing for the literature exam, but there are a few blogs about it and this site which gives an outline: [www.powells.com]
Which should help you know at least what types of questions to expect.
If you don't have to take the written test, the most difficult part in my opinion, then all the better for you. Just ignore #'s 9 and 10 on my list of test tips above.

Les