PLEASE WRITE YOUR NAME ONLY ON THE BACK OF THIS TEST.

Creative Writing

Barbara Daniels

Fall 2002 / Night Class

Poetry Exam

How well you write affects your grade on this test, so plan and proofread carefully. Be sure to write the essays in complete sentences. Crossouts and corrections are fine; don’t take the time to copy anything over. In your answers show off what you’ve learned from the text and from our classes. Don’t repeat yourself; use different kinds of knowledge in different parts of the test.

A. Choose FIVE of the terms from the list below. Define them in no more than three

sentences. You may include examples to illustrate your definitions if you wish.

(4 points each for a total of 20 points; use 1/5 of your time, about 15 minutes, for this

part.)

epiphany anaphora assonance alliteration hyperbole

aubade inversion metaphor prose poem image

B. Choose FOUR of the essay questions below. Be specific; aim to write at least three

quarters of a page for each one; more is better. (20 points for each essay)

1. Write a letter to Steve Kowit, discussing what you like about his book, In the Palm of Your Hand, the textbook for this class. Be specific about what you’ve learned from the book and how it’s helped your writing. It’s acceptable to include one gentle suggestion about what you think might make the book even better.

2. Write a poem in which most lines start with the word “Where.” Use your title to make the location clear. Make the poem specific (rather than vague and general). Include all of the following: a body part, a secret or a lie, an item of clothing, the name of a body of water (such as a lake or river), and the name of a famous person (living or dead).

3. Write a ten-minute poem using the following guidelines:

Start with one of the following lines:

More women have done this than you can imagine.

or

More people have done this than you can imagine.

Include four of the following words: lip, wheel, dime, Utah, blueberry, mascara,

clarinet, egg, aluminum. You can change the form of these words (for example,

change wheel to wheels). Add a title.

4. Imagine “Boy Beneath the Road” has been distributed at one of the workshops our class holds. Explain the literal situation (insofar as the poem allows this). Then discuss what you would praise in the poem and what suggestions you’d give to make the poem better. Tell why.

Boy Beneath the Road

My head is luminous, my pockets slack.

Dark brick reels down behind me

forming a vault. Light flames

from my scalp. I'm seventeen.

My heart burns

through the wall of my chest.

I stashed a six-pack of beer

on the floor of the underpass.

A week from now it will still lean

against the solemn bricks.

In a year the bottles will be broken.

I will shine from the splintered glass.

5. Here’s a bad poem. Explain what’s wrong.

Tracks of the Wandering Mind

I want sometimes naught but to weep

As standing by the trestle deep

Oft I long to follow that railroad train

To a realm of dream that’s for e’er free of pain.

What an urge I have to stray somewhere

On a train that’s bigger than a bear

Which climbs up toward immensely old mountain peaks

And watch Neptune’s sea for days and weeks.

A train to some vast tropic isle

Where swaying beauty maketh me smile.

But the trains of reality just skitter off

And my city home where pollution does cough

Doesn’t let me see the pyramids

Or go drinking till dawn with memory’s kids,

Or riding off to the Orient

Getting away from this discontent.

But today something inside me is going through some kind of shift

And giving my spirits that needed lift,

and I’m bidding adieu to my dreams of escape

While the train is roaring through like a ghostly shape.

6. Here’s a good poem. Discuss its strengths, discussing both form and content. Be sure to

include specific ideas and terms you learned from this class and from your textbook.

The Portrait

My mother never forgave my father

for killing himself,

especially at such an awkward time

and in a public park,

that spring

when I was waiting to be born.

She locked his name

in her deepest cabinet

and would not let him out,

though I could hear him thumping.

When I came down from the attic

with the pastel portrait in my hand

of a long-lipped stranger

with a brave moustache

and deep brown level eyes,

she ripped it into shreds

without a single word

and slapped me hard.

In my sixty-fourth year

I can feel my cheek

still burning.

Stanley Kunitz

7. Imagine a friend of yours, Rob, has written to ask for advice on how to revise his poems,

which he’s never done before. Write a letter to him in which you describe strategies,

activities, and attitudes you think would be helpful. Make your advice lively and

interesting so he’ll want to follow it, but also keep your tone appropriate to a college

exam, using complete sentences and formal wording.

8. Break the following paragraph into lines, rewriting it as a poem. Don’t change the

wording, but feel free to change punctuation and capitalization. Provide a shape for the

poem that reveals what it means to you. Then write a paragraph explaining what you

accomplish with the line breaks and other shaping (such as indentations or stanza breaks)

you’ve provided, and relate this to your sense of what the poem means. The title is

“Wild Geese.”

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—over and over announcing your place in the family of things.