American Poetry
Emily Dickinson
1. When was the poem ‘Wild Nights Wild Nights’ written and published?
Ans: It was written and published in 1861.
2. How does the poet express his thoughts about the wild Nights? Or when should be the wild nights luxury for the poet?
Ans: She expresses that the wild nights might be luxury if her partner was with her.
3. What is rowing in the sea like?
Ans: Rowing in the sea is like rowing in heaven.
4. What does the poet prefer to nights?
Ans: The poet prefers to be anchored in her beloved in the wild nights.
5. What does the ‘wild nights’ symbolize?
Ans: The wild nights symbolize endless sexual pleasures.
6. What does the poet mean by ‘luxury’?
Ans: Luxury means endless sexual pleasures.
7. What does the poet compare her heart to in ‘Wild Nights Wild Nights’? Or how does the poet express the steadiness of her heart in the matter of her love?
আরো পড়ুনঃDiscuss the Elements of Anti-Racialism in the Poems of Langston Hughes. (বাংলায়)
Ans: The poet expresses the steadiness of her heart by comparing it with an anchored ship.
8. What does the poet mean by ‘rowing in Eden’?
Ans: The sea is like Eden or heaven to the poet, and she means rowing in the sea is like rowing in Eden.
9. What does the phrase ‘lover’s port’ suggest in ‘Wild Nights Wild Nights’?
Ans: The phrase suggests a safer place for the lover.
10. Where is the funeral taking place?
Ans: Inside the poet’s brain.
11. Why does the poet repeat the word ‘treading’?
Ans: To aware the reader of her mental breakdown.
12. Why do the mourners sit down?
Ans: They sit down so that the funeral ceremony may begin.
13. What is the funeral service like, as the poet feels? Or why does the funeral service seem like a stomp to the poet?
Ans: The beating of the drum makes the funeral service like a stomp to the poet.
14. Why is the poet’s mind going numb?
আরো পড়ুনঃDiscuss the Theme of Alienation in Robert Frost’s poetry. (বাংলায়)
Ans: The beating of the drum.
15. Whom did Dickenson feel moving ‘to and fro’ in ‘I Felt Funeral in My Brain’?
Ans: The mourners.
16. What was Dickenson’s idea about liquor or alcohol? Or what does the poet imagine? Or what kind of alcohol is it?
Ans: The poet imagines a liquor or alcohol that has never brewed in the large cups of pearl.
17. What is the poet intoxicated about? Or What does the poet do be intoxicated? Or how does Dickenson describe her experience of going outdoors in summer?
Ans: Being intoxicated with air, the poet travels through the summer days.
18. When will the poet go on drinking liquor from the flowers of digitalis?
Ans: When the landlords will turn out the drunken bees and when the butterflies will give up their drinks.
19. What will the seraph and the saints do to see her drinking?
Ans: The seraph will swing their snowy hats and the saints will run to the window.
20. What is the attitude of the poet to nature in the poem ‘I Taste a Liquor’?
Ans: In this poem, the poet expresses a deep sensuous enjoyment of nature indirectly.
Walt Whitman
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d:
1. Who is Walt Whitman?
Ans: He is an American poet of 19th century.
2. What is an elegy?
Ans: An elegy is a mournful poem or song expressing sorrow or lamentation, often written for the dead.
আরো পড়ুনঃEvaluate Robert Frost as a Poet of Nature. (বাংলায়)
3. What did the poet do when the lilacs bloomed last at his dooryard? Or where does the lilac bush stand? Or how does the lilac-bush look like? Or how does the poet describe the lilac-bush?
Ans: The lilac bush, tall growing with heart shaped green leaves, stands in his dooryard. The last bloom of this flower makes the poet mourn.
4. What does the poet do to the lilac bush?
Ans: The poet greets spring with its beautifully colored blooms and heart-shaped leaves of bright green.
5. Where is a shy and hidden bird warbling a song? Or how does the poet describe the bird? Or why does the poet call the bird his brother?
Ans: It is a lonesome bird warbling a song in a remote corner of the marsh. The poet refers to the bird as his bother because he feels a kinship with the bird in terms of the importance of their creative effort.
6. What kind of song is the thrush or bird singing?
Ans: The bird is singing a song of the ‘bleeding throat’?
7. Where is the destination of the coffin?
Ans: The location of the coffin’s final resting place in the grave is its destination.
8. What does the poet offer to the coffin?
Ans: The poet presents the coffin with the lilac spring he broke from the dooryard lilac bush.
9. What would the poet do for death and all coffins?
Ans: The poet would present blossoms and green flower for death and all coffins.
10. What does the poet ask the bird? Or why does the poet linger in coming to the singing bird?
Ans: The poet asks the bird to continue its singing. He lingers in coming to the bird as the western glamorous sky stops him.
11. What does the poet ask his body and soul to do?
আরো পড়ুনঃHow Does Dickinson Treat Immortality in Her Poems? (বাংলায়)
Ans: He asks his body and soul to see his own land.
12. What kind of song will the bird sing? Or what holds the poet back from coming to the singing bird?
Ans: The bird will sing human misery. He cannot come to this bird due to the influence of western stars and the mastering smell of the lilacs.
13. Who walked with the poet as his companions?
Ans: The knowledge and thought of death walked with the poet as his companions.
14. Whom did the grey-brown bird receive?
Ans: The grey-brown bird received the three comrades including the poet, and the knowledge and thought of death.
15. Where did the carol of the bird come from?
Ans: It came from the deep secluded recess, the fragrant cedars, and the ghostly pines.
16. How does the poet describe death? Or how does the poet welcome death?
Ans: Death, according to the poet, is a dark mother who always approaches near with soft footsteps to hug each with her arms. He greets this form of death by singing a pleasant song.
O Captain, My Captain
1. Whom does the poet address as ‘Captain’? or To whom does the poet pay his respect?
Ans: The poet addresses the 16th American president Abraham Lincoln as captain.
2. Why does the poet address him as captain?
Ans: America is like a ship to the poet and Lincoln is its president. So, Lincoln is supposed to be the captain of this ship to the poet.
3. What does the phrase ‘fearful trip’ mean?
And: The President’s daring moves to demolish the existing slavery system in America.
4. What does the phrase ‘the prize we sought is won’ refer to?
Ans: It refers to the president’s tremendous victory over slavery.
5. How is the captain lying on deck of the ship? Or what does the poet ask the captain to do?
Ans: The captain lies dead and cold on the ship’s deck, with a large bleeding from his body, and the poet invites him to rise to hear the bells that the people are sounding in joy.
6. How are the people going to give the captain their warmest ovation?
Ans: The flag is flying, the instrument of music is playing, and the nation is prepared to welcome the captain with flowery arrangements and wreaths with ribbons.
7. What does the poet say about the ship?
Ans: The ship is moored safe and sound and its voyage is closed and done.
8. What is the occasion of the composition of the poem?
Ans: The poem was written in response to Abraham Lincoln’s passing on April 15, 1865.
Robert Frost
1. What strangeness of sight did the poet leave?
Ans: The poet left a distorted view of the world which was strange.
2. Where did the poet get the pane of glass?
Ans: He got it from the drinking trough.
3. What is the poet overtired of?
Ans: He is tired of the plentiful supply of apples that he desired.
4. What will trouble his sleep?
Ans: His sleep will be troubled by the abundance of apples in his dream.
5. What does the poem ‘After Apple-Picking’ describe? Or what attitude to apple picking is described in this poem?
Ans: The poem describes the poet’s thoughts, feelings, and imagination after apple picking.
6. Why does the poet call grass ‘hoary grass’?
Ans: To show the worthlessness of grass.
7. What does the ice storm do to the birches? Or why do they bend birches permanently?
Ans: Ice storms permanently bend the birches because the weight of the ice is too great for the trees, destroying their strength.
9. When do the birches not right themselves? Or when do the birches remain permanently bent?
Ans: If they are bent by the weight of the ice for a long amount of time, they do not straight out and remain permanently bent.
10. When do the birches look like the girls on hand and knees?
Ans: The birches look like girls on their hands and knees when they are permanently bent due to the heavy ice.
11. How would the boy play with the birches?
Ans: He would repeatedly ride down his father’s trees one by one until he had eliminated all their rigidity.
12. What does the poet dream of in ‘birches’?
Ans: The poet used to swing through the birches, and now he dreams about doing it once more.
13. What would the poet like to do?
Ans: The poet wishes to leave the world for a while before returning to it to start over.
14. What is the earth right place for?
Ans: The earth is the right place for love
15. How does the poet like to go towards heaven?
Ans: By climbing the black branches of a birch tree.
17. What forces the birches bend?
Ans: The birches are bent by the force of ice.
18. What does the poet mean by the phrase ‘something there is that doesn’t love a wall?
Ans: By this phrase, the poet means that there is something like a force in nature which does not love a wall.
19. Where does that ‘something’ make gaps? Or when are gaps found suddenly in the walls?
Ans: In springtime that ‘something’ makes gaps in the wall.
20. How did the neighbors do the work of mending the wall?
Ans: Each man moved along one side of the wall as they picked up the stones that had fallen to his side.
21. How were the boulders or stones in shape and size?
Ans: Some of the boulders or stones were like loaves and some were round like balls.
22. What kind of man was his neighbor in the poet’s opinion?
Ans: According to the poet, he was a conservative man.
23. What do you mean by the phrase ‘Good fences make good neighbors’?
Ans: It simply clarifies the necessity of having separate borders between properties and ensuring that neighbors respect these boundaries for neighborly interactions to remain cordial.
24. Who was warren?
Ans: He is the husband of Mary.
25. Why was May waiting for her husband?
Ans: To give him the news of Silas’ return.
26. Who was Silas and where was he back from?
Ans: Silas was their old servant who left them in search of a new job but returned from his vain search.
27. Why did Silas leave his job?
Ans: Because Warren refused to increase his salary.
28. What did Mary tell her husband about Silas?
Ans: She told her husband to be kind to Silas.
29. What did Silas say when Warren refused to pay him any fixed wages?
Ans: He claimed someone else could pay him fixed wages.
30. Why did Mary tell Warren not to walk loudly?
Ans: Because his loud voice might disturb Silas’s sleep.
31. What more did Silas say he wanted to do?
Ans: The wanted to do clear the upper grassy land.
32. What did Mary do when she found Silas huddled at the door fast asleep?
Ans: She pulled him to the house, served him tea, and attempted to get him to smoke.
33. Who was Harold Wilson?
Ans: A schoolboy, Harold had worked with Silas on Warren’s farm for four years.
34. What troubled Silas like a dream?
Ans: Silas’s working on Warren’s farm troubled him like a dream.
35. Why did Silas disapprove of Warren’s studying Latin?
Ans: Because it will not give him any practical skill.
36. What did Warren say about Silas’ efficiency as a labour on his farm?
Ans: According to him, Silas was skilled enough to build a load of hay on the cart.
37. What did Mary do when the moon poured soft light on her lap?
Ans: She extended her hand among the moonlight beams while spreading her apron to the moonlight.
38. Why did Warren mock Mary gently?
Ans: Because she said Silas had come home (though he is not the family member).
39. How did Warren define home?
Ans: His definition about home is “Home is the place where, when you have to go there,/They have to take you in.”
40. What was Silas’ brother?
Ans: He was a director in the bank.
41. How did Silas hurt Mary?
Ans: By laying and rolling his old head on the sharp-edge chair-back.
42. Where did Mary send Warren?
Ans: She sent him to investigate Silas’ condition.
43. What was Mary’s idea about the return of Silas?
Ans: Silas returned due to his weak and helpless condition.
44. Why was the poet sorry in ‘Road not Taken’?
Ans: Because he could not travel the two roads at a time.
45. Why did he take the other road?
Ans: Because it had better claim; it was grassy and untrodden so far.
46. What does the poet mean by the phrase ‘And that has made all the difference’?
Ans: He means by this phrase that one may success following the less travelled path ignoring the frequently used one.
47. What does the poet mean by ‘Acquainted with the nights’?
Ans: By this phrase, the poet wants to mean that he has experienced most of the affairs that happen at night.
48. How did the poet find city lane to be?
Ans: He found it to be the saddest.
49. What did he see at an ‘unearthly height’?
Ans: He saw one ‘luminary clock’ at unearthly height.
50. What did the luminary clock proclaim? Or what type of clock was it?
Ans: This symbolic clock proclaimed moral values claiming that the time was neither wrong nor right.
51. How does the poet address the tree at his window?
Ans: When night falls and his window fall off, he declares that there should never be a curtain placed between him and the tree outside his window.
52. How does the tree look? Or what is similar between the tree and the poet?
Ans: The tree resembles a dream head that has been raised out of the ground and is unaffected by everything else. The poet is like the tree in that he gets similarly swept away by unpleasant dreams while sleeping.
53. What does the poet mean by the phrase ‘I have seen you taken and tossed’?
Ans: By using this word, he is implying that he witnessed the tree being blown over by the wind.
Langston Hughes
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
1. Who is Langston Hughes?
Ans: He is a 20th century American black poet.
2. When was the poem written and what was its publication background?
Ans: The poem was written in 1920 based on the sight of an American state, Mississippi, experienced during the poet’s train journey.
3. In which journal was the poem first published?
Ans: In the Crisis that had mainly the African American leadership.
4. What are the themes of the poem?
Ans: The themes are mostly from the Harlem Renaissance society.
5. To whom did the writer dedicate his poem?
Ans: To W.E.B. DU Bois who is the author of the magazine ‘The Crisis’.
6. What are the rivers mentioned in the poem?
Ans: The rivers are the Euphrates, the Congo, the Nile, and the Mississippi River.
7. What is the full name of Abe Lincoln?
Ans: Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth American president, who is famous for abolishing slavery.
8. What is New Orleans?
Ans: It is one of the states of America.
9. What does the poet mean by the phrase ‘I heard the singing of Mississippi’?
Ans: By this phrase, the poet implies that Abraham Lincoln is inspired to abolish slavery by the river, the Mississippi.
10. Why does the poet repeat ‘I’ve known rivers’?
Ans: Because he aims to emphasize it in this poem.
11. What is the main theme of the poem?
Ans: Hughes explores themes of identity and resilience in ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers.’
12. Is the speaker in the poem the poet himself?
Ans: No. The poet is not the speaker of this poem.
Others:
1. What attitude to America is expressed by the line ‘I, too Sing America’?
Ans: This line expresses deep love and patriotism of the poet.
2. What does the phrase ‘I am the darker brother’ mean?
Ans: The phrase means that the poet is a negro man who considers himself as the brother of other Americans.
3. How does that speaker take this matter of his being sent to eat in the kitchen?
Ans: He uses the fact that he was taken to the kitchen to eat to his advantage.
4. Why will the white people feel ashamed in future according to the expectation of the speaker?
Ans: Because they would have realized their unfairness and hatred for black people.
5. How was the social fabric of America which was comprised of a black population in the early 1950s?
Ans: The social fabric was divided between the black Americans and the white Americans.
6. Whom did the poet hear playing a piano in ‘The Weary Blues’?
Ans: The poet overheard a negro playing a piano in a dreamy rhythmic melody on Lenox Ave. in New York City.
7. How does the poet react to the melancholy song of the negro?
Ans: He reacts emotionally and utters oh Blues.
8. Where did the Blues come from?
Ans: The Blues were coming from the soul of a black man.
9. What do you understand by the Blues?
Ans: The Blues means sad feelings or feelings of despair or sorrow.
10. How long did the negro sing his song?
Ans: The negro sang far into the night till the stars and the moon disappeared from the sky.
11. How did the negro singer sleep?
Ans: He slept like a rock or a dead man.
13. What is Harlem? Or where is Harlem? Or why is it famous for?
Ans: It is the name of neighborhood in New York city that is famous for Harlem Renaissance.
14. Who is the speaker of the poem ‘Harlem’?
Ans: A black American or African American is the speaker in this poem.
15. What does the phrase ‘deferred dream’ mean?
Ans: The dream that is not realized immediately but is delayed in realization.
16. Why is it impossible for African Americans to dream or aspire to great thigs?
Ans: Due to the fact that African Americans were denied equal rights and benefits with white people and were subjected to oppression and repression by white Americans.
Course: American Poetry
Emily Dickinson
Part- A
1. When was the poem ‘Wild Nights Wild Nights’ written and published?
Ans: It was written and published in 1861.
2. How does the poet express his thoughts about the wild Nights? Or when should be the wild nights luxury for the poet?
Ans: She expresses that the wild nights might be luxury if her partner was with her.
3. What is rowing in the sea like?
Ans: Rowing in the sea is like rowing in heaven.
4. What does the poet prefer to nights?
Ans: The poet prefers to be anchored in her beloved in the wild nights.
5. What does the ‘wild nights’ symbolize?
Ans: The wild nights symbolize endless sexual pleasures.
6. What does the poet mean by ‘luxury’?
Ans: Luxury means endless sexual pleasures.
7. What does the poet compare her heart to in ‘Wild Nights Wild Nights’? Or how does the poet express the steadiness of her heart in the matter of her love?
Ans: The poet expresses the steadiness of her heart by comparing it with an anchored ship.
8. What does the poet mean by ‘rowing in Eden’?
Ans: The sea is like Eden or heaven to the poet, and she means rowing in the sea is like rowing in Eden.
9. What does the phrase ‘lover’s port’ suggest in ‘Wild Nights Wild Nights’?
Ans: The phrase suggests a safer place for the lover.
10. Where is the funeral taking place?
Ans: Inside the poet’s brain.
11. Why does the poet repeat the word ‘treading’?
Ans: To aware the reader of her mental breakdown.
12. Why do the mourners sit down?
Ans: They sit down so that the funeral ceremony may begin.
13. What is the funeral service like, as the poet feels? Or why does the funeral service seem like a stomp to the poet?
Ans: The beating of the drum makes the funeral service like a stomp to the poet.
14. Why is the poet’s mind going numb?
Ans: The beating of the drum.
15. Whom did Dickenson feel moving ‘to and fro’ in ‘I Felt Funeral in My Brain’?
Ans: The mourners.
16. What was Dickenson’s idea about liquor or alcohol? Or what does the poet imagine? Or what kind of alcohol is it?
Ans: The poet imagines a liquor or alcohol that has never brewed in the large cups of pearl.
17. What is the poet intoxicated about? Or What does the poet do be intoxicated? Or how does Dickenson describe her experience of going outdoors in summer?
Ans: Being intoxicated with air, the poet travels through the summer days.
18. When will the poet go on drinking liquor from the flowers of digitalis?
Ans: When the landlords will turn out the drunken bees and when the butterflies will give up their drinks.
19. What will the seraph and the saints do to see her drinking?
Ans: The seraph will swing their snowy hats and the saints will run to the window.
20. What is the attitude of the poet to nature in the poem ‘I Taste a Liquor’?
Ans: In this poem, the poet expresses a deep sensuous enjoyment of nature indirectly.
Walt Whitman
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d:
1. Who is Walt Whitman?
Ans: He is an American poet of 19th century.
2. What is an elegy?
Ans: An elegy is a mournful poem or song expressing sorrow or lamentation, often written for the dead.
3. What did the poet do when the lilacs bloomed last at his dooryard? Or where does the lilac bush stand? Or how does the lilac-bush look like? Or how does the poet describe the lilac-bush?
Ans: The lilac bush, tall growing with heart shaped green leaves, stands in his dooryard. The last bloom of this flower makes the poet mourn.
4. What does the poet do to the lilac bush?
Ans: The poet greets spring with its beautifully colored blooms and heart-shaped leaves of bright green.
5. Where is a shy and hidden bird warbling a song? Or how does the poet describe the bird? Or why does the poet call the bird his brother?
Ans: It is a lonesome bird warbling a song in a remote corner of the marsh. The poet refers to the bird as his bother because he feels a kinship with the bird in terms of the importance of their creative effort.
6. What kind of song is the thrush or bird singing?
Ans: The bird is singing a song of the ‘bleeding throat’?
7. Where is the destination of the coffin?
Ans: The location of the coffin’s final resting place in the grave is its destination.
8. What does the poet offer to the coffin?
Ans: The poet presents the coffin with the lilac spring he broke from the dooryard lilac bush.
9. What would the poet do for death and all coffins?
Ans: The poet would present blossoms and green flower for death and all coffins.
10. What does the poet ask the bird? Or why does the poet linger in coming to the singing bird?
Ans: The poet asks the bird to continue its singing. He lingers in coming to the bird as the western glamorous sky stops him.
11. What does the poet ask his body and soul to do?
Ans: He asks his body and soul to see his own land.
12. What kind of song will the bird sing? Or what holds the poet back from coming to the singing bird?
Ans: The bird will sing human misery. He cannot come to this bird due to the influence of western stars and the mastering smell of the lilacs.
13. Who walked with the poet as his companions?
Ans: The knowledge and thought of death walked with the poet as his companions.
14. Whom did the grey-brown bird receive?
Ans: The grey-brown bird received the three comrades including the poet, and the knowledge and thought of death.
15. Where did the carol of the bird come from?
Ans: It came from the deep secluded recess, the fragrant cedars, and the ghostly pines.
16. How does the poet describe death? Or how does the poet welcome death?
Ans: Death, according to the poet, is a dark mother who always approaches near with soft footsteps to hug each with her arms. He greets this form of death by singing a pleasant song.
O Captain, My Captain
1. Whom does the poet address as ‘Captain’? or To whom does the poet pay his respect?
Ans: The poet addresses the 16th American president Abraham Lincoln as captain.
2. Why does the poet address him as captain?
Ans: America is like a ship to the poet and Lincoln is its president. So, Lincoln is supposed to be the captain of this ship to the poet.
3. What does the phrase ‘fearful trip’ mean?
And: The President’s daring moves to demolish the existing slavery system in America.
4. What does the phrase ‘the prize we sought is won’ refer to?
Ans: It refers to the president’s tremendous victory over slavery.
5. How is the captain lying on deck of the ship? Or what does the poet ask the captain to do?
Ans: The captain lies dead and cold on the ship’s deck, with a large bleeding from his body, and the poet invites him to rise to hear the bells that the people are sounding in joy.
6. How are the people going to give the captain their warmest ovation?
Ans: The flag is flying, the instrument of music is playing, and the nation is prepared to welcome the captain with flowery arrangements and wreaths with ribbons.
7. What does the poet say about the ship?
Ans: The ship is moored safe and sound and its voyage is closed and done.
8. What is the occasion of the composition of the poem?
Ans: The poem was written in response to Abraham Lincoln’s passing on April 15, 1865.
Robert Frost
1. What strangeness of sight did the poet leave?
Ans: The poet left a distorted view of the world which was strange.
2. Where did the poet get the pane of glass?
Ans: He got it from the drinking trough.
3. What is the poet overtired of?
Ans: He is tired of the plentiful supply of apples that he desired.
4. What will trouble his sleep?
Ans: His sleep will be troubled by the abundance of apples in his dream.
5. What does the poem ‘After Apple-Picking’ describe? Or what attitude to apple picking is described in this poem?
Ans: The poem describes the poet’s thoughts, feelings, and imagination after apple picking.
6. Why does the poet call grass ‘hoary grass’?
Ans: To show the worthlessness of grass.
7. What does the ice storm do to the birches? Or why do they bend birches permanently?
Ans: Ice storms permanently bend the birches because the weight of the ice is too great for the trees, destroying their strength.
9. When do the birches not right themselves? Or when do the birches remain permanently bent?
Ans: If they are bent by the weight of the ice for a long amount of time, they do not straight out and remain permanently bent.
10. When do the birches look like the girls on hand and knees?
Ans: The birches look like girls on their hands and knees when they are permanently bent due to the heavy ice.
11. How would the boy play with the birches?
Ans: He would repeatedly ride down his father’s trees one by one until he had eliminated all their rigidity.
12. What does the poet dream of in ‘birches’?
Ans: The poet used to swing through the birches, and now he dreams about doing it once more.
13. What would the poet like to do?
Ans: The poet wishes to leave the world for a while before returning to it to start over.
14. What is the earth right place for?
Ans: The earth is the right place for love
15. How does the poet like to go towards heaven?
Ans: By climbing the black branches of a birch tree.
17. What forces the birches bend?
Ans: The birches are bent by the force of ice.
18. What does the poet mean by the phrase ‘something there is that doesn’t love a wall?
Ans: By this phrase, the poet means that there is something like a force in nature which does not love a wall.
19. Where does that ‘something’ make gaps? Or when are gaps found suddenly in the walls?
Ans: In springtime that ‘something’ makes gaps in the wall.
20. How did the neighbors do the work of mending the wall?
Ans: Each man moved along one side of the wall as they picked up the stones that had fallen to his side.
21. How were the boulders or stones in shape and size?
Ans: Some of the boulders or stones were like loaves and some were round like balls.
22. What kind of man was his neighbor in the poet’s opinion?
Ans: According to the poet, he was a conservative man.
23. What do you mean by the phrase ‘Good fences make good neighbors’?
Ans: It simply clarifies the necessity of having separate borders between properties and ensuring that neighbors respect these boundaries for neighborly interactions to remain cordial.
24. Who was warren?
Ans: He is the husband of Mary.
25. Why was May waiting for her husband?
Ans: To give him the news of Silas’ return.
26. Who was Silas and where was he back from?
Ans: Silas was their old servant who left them in search of a new job but returned from his vain search.
27. Why did Silas leave his job?
Ans: Because Warren refused to increase his salary.
28. What did Mary tell her husband about Silas?
Ans: She told her husband to be kind to Silas.
29. What did Silas say when Warren refused to pay him any fixed wages?
Ans: He claimed someone else could pay him fixed wages.
30. Why did Mary tell Warren not to walk loudly?
Ans: Because his loud voice might disturb Silas’s sleep.
31. What more did Silas say he wanted to do?
Ans: The wanted to do clear the upper grassy land.
32. What did Mary do when she found Silas huddled at the door fast asleep?
Ans: She pulled him to the house, served him tea, and attempted to get him to smoke.
33. Who was Harold Wilson?
Ans: A schoolboy, Harold had worked with Silas on Warren’s farm for four years.
34. What troubled Silas like a dream?
Ans: Silas’s working on Warren’s farm troubled him like a dream.
35. Why did Silas disapprove of Warren’s studying Latin?
Ans: Because it will not give him any practical skill.
36. What did Warren say about Silas’ efficiency as a labour on his farm?
Ans: According to him, Silas was skilled enough to build a load of hay on the cart.
37. What did Mary do when the moon poured soft light on her lap?
Ans: She extended her hand among the moonlight beams while spreading her apron to the moonlight.
38. Why did Warren mock Mary gently?
Ans: Because she said Silas had come home (though he is not the family member).
39. How did Warren define home?
Ans: His definition about home is “Home is the place where, when you have to go there,/They have to take you in.”
40. What was Silas’ brother?
Ans: He was a director in the bank.
41. How did Silas hurt Mary?
Ans: By laying and rolling his old head on the sharp-edge chair-back.
42. Where did Mary send Warren?
Ans: She sent him to investigate Silas’ condition.
43. What was Mary’s idea about the return of Silas?
Ans: Silas returned due to his weak and helpless condition.
44. Why was the poet sorry in ‘Road not Taken’?
Ans: Because he could not travel the two roads at a time.
45. Why did he take the other road?
Ans: Because it had better claim; it was grassy and untrodden so far.
46. What does the poet mean by the phrase ‘And that has made all the difference’?
Ans: He means by this phrase that one may success following the less travelled path ignoring the frequently used one.
47. What does the poet mean by ‘Acquainted with the nights’?
Ans: By this phrase, the poet wants to mean that he has experienced most of the affairs that happen at night.
48. How did the poet find city lane to be?
Ans: He found it to be the saddest.
49. What did he see at an ‘unearthly height’?
Ans: He saw one ‘luminary clock’ at unearthly height.
50. What did the luminary clock proclaim? Or what type of clock was it?
Ans: This symbolic clock proclaimed moral values claiming that the time was neither wrong nor right.
51. How does the poet address the tree at his window?
Ans: When night falls and his window fall off, he declares that there should never be a curtain placed between him and the tree outside his window.
52. How does the tree look? Or what is similar between the tree and the poet?
Ans: The tree resembles a dream head that has been raised out of the ground and is unaffected by everything else. The poet is like the tree in that he gets similarly swept away by unpleasant dreams while sleeping.
53. What does the poet mean by the phrase ‘I have seen you taken and tossed’?
Ans: By using this word, he is implying that he witnessed the tree being blown over by the wind.
Langston Hughes
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
1. Who is Langston Hughes?
Ans: He is a 20th century American black poet.
2. When was the poem written and what was its publication background?
Ans: The poem was written in 1920 based on the sight of an American state, Mississippi, experienced during the poet’s train journey.
3. In which journal was the poem first published?
Ans: In the Crisis that had mainly the African American leadership.
4. What are the themes of the poem?
Ans: The themes are mostly from the Harlem Renaissance society.
5. To whom did the writer dedicate his poem?
Ans: To W.E.B. DU Bois who is the author of the magazine ‘The Crisis’.
6. What are the rivers mentioned in the poem?
Ans: The rivers are the Euphrates, the Congo, the Nile, and the Mississippi River.
7. What is the full name of Abe Lincoln?
Ans: Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth American president, who is famous for abolishing slavery.
8. What is New Orleans?
Ans: It is one of the states of America.
9. What does the poet mean by the phrase ‘I heard the singing of Mississippi’?
Ans: By this phrase, the poet implies that Abraham Lincoln is inspired to abolish slavery by the river, the Mississippi.
10. Why does the poet repeat ‘I’ve known rivers’?
Ans: Because he aims to emphasize it in this poem.
11. What is the main theme of the poem?
Ans: Hughes explores themes of identity and resilience in ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers.’
12. Is the speaker in the poem the poet himself?
Ans: No. The poet is not the speaker of this poem.
Others:
1. What attitude to America is expressed by the line ‘I, too Sing America’?
Ans: This line expresses deep love and patriotism of the poet.
2. What does the phrase ‘I am the darker brother’ mean?
Ans: The phrase means that the poet is a negro man who considers himself as the brother of other Americans.
3. How does that speaker take this matter of his being sent to eat in the kitchen?
Ans: He uses the fact that he was taken to the kitchen to eat to his advantage.
4. Why will the white people feel ashamed in future according to the expectation of the speaker?
Ans: Because they would have realized their unfairness and hatred for black people.
5. How was the social fabric of America which was comprised of a black population in the early 1950s?
Ans: The social fabric was divided between the black Americans and the white Americans.
6. Whom did the poet hear playing a piano in ‘The Weary Blues’?
Ans: The poet overheard a negro playing a piano in a dreamy rhythmic melody on Lenox Ave. in New York City.
7. How does the poet react to the melancholy song of the negro?
Ans: He reacts emotionally and utters oh Blues.
8. Where did the Blues come from?
Ans: The Blues were coming from the soul of a black man.
9. What do you understand by the Blues?
Ans: The Blues means sad feelings or feelings of despair or sorrow.
10. How long did the negro sing his song?
Ans: The negro sang far into the night till the stars and the moon disappeared from the sky.
11. How did the negro singer sleep?
Ans: He slept like a rock or a dead man.
13. What is Harlem? Or where is Harlem? Or why is it famous for?
Ans: It is the name of neighborhood in New York city that is famous for Harlem Renaissance.
14. Who is the speaker of the poem ‘Harlem’?
Ans: A black American or African American is the speaker in this poem.
15. What does the phrase ‘deferred dream’ mean?
Ans: The dream that is not realized immediately but is delayed in realization.
16. Why is it impossible for African Americans to dream or aspire to great thigs?
Ans: Due to the fact that African Americans were denied equal rights and benefits with white people and were subjected to oppression and repression by white Americans.
