Q2 Swamp
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2004 AP® ENGLISH LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION
FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS (Form B)
Question 2
(Suggested time — 40 minutes. This question counts as one-third of the total essay section score.)
Read the following poem carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze the techniques the poet uses to develop the relationship between the speaker and the swamp.
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Crossing the Swamp |
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Here is the endless |
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wet thick |
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cosmos, the center |
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of everything — the nugget |
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5 of dense sap, branching |
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vines, the dark burred |
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faintly belching |
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bogs. Here |
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is swamp, here |
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is struggle, |
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closure — |
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pathless, seamless, |
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peerless mud. My bones |
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knock together at the pale |
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15 |
joints, trying |
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for foothold, fingerhold, |
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mindhold over |
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such slick crossings, deep |
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hipholes, hummocks* |
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20 |
that sink silently |
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into the black, slack |
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earthsoup. I feel |
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not wet so much as |
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painted and glittered |
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25 with the fat grassy |
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mires, the rich |
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and succulent marrows |
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of earth — a poor |
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dry stick given |
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30 |
one more chance by the whims |
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of swamp water — a bough |
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that still, after all these years, |
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could take root, |
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sprout, branch out, bud — |
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make of its life a breathing |
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palace of leaves. |
*low mounds of earth
From AMERICAN PRIMITIVE by Mary Oliver.
Copyright © 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983 by Mary
Oliver; First Appeared in ATLANTIC MONTHLY (1980).
By permission of Little, Brown and Company, (Inc.) .
Copyright © 2004 by College Entrance Examination Board. All rights reserved.
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