Read the next two selections and answer the questions that follow.
by Peter Meinke
I know why, getting up in the cold dawn
you paint cold yellow houses
and silver trees. Look at those green birds,
almost real, and that lonely child looking
at those houses and trees.
You paint (the best way) without reasoning,
to see what you feel, and green birds
are what a child sees.
Some gifts are not given: you
are delivered to them,
bound by chains of nerves and genes
stronger than iron or steel, although
unseen. You have painted every day
for as long as I can remember
and will be painting still
when you read this, some cold
and distant December when the child
is old and the trees no longer silver
but black fingers scratching a grey sky.
And you never know why (I was lying
before when I said I knew).
You never know the force that drives you wild
to paint that sky, that bird flying,
and is never satisfied today
but maybe tomorrow
when the sky is a surreal sea
in which you drown . . .
I tell you this with love and pride
and sorrow, my artist child
(while the birds change from green to blue to brown).
“To a Daughter with Artistic Talent” from Liquid Paper: New and Selected Poems by Peter Meinke, ©1991. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Use both passages to answer questions 1-4.
Which sentence best states a difference between the attitude of the speaker in the poem and the attitude of the narrator in the story?
Read these quotations. From To a Daughter with Artistic Talent lines 13-19 and Big Fish line 14.
Use both passages to answer questions 1-4.
Both the daughter’s paintings in “To a Daughter with Artistic Talent” and the father’s stories in the excerpt from Big Fish —
Use both passages to answer questions 1-4.
What is a difference in how the two selections portray fathers?
Use Big Fish to answer question
In paragraphs 3 through 5, the phrases “Let me guess” and “no doubt” give the son’s dialogue a tone that is —
Select TWO correct responses and use Big Fish to answer question
What does paragraph 16 reveal about the son?
Use to A Daughter With Artistic Talent to answer question
Read lines 26 and 27 from the poem.
when the sky is a surreal sea
in which you drown . . .
This image can best be interpreted as meaning that —
Use to A Daughter With Artistic Talent to answer question
Which sentence describes a shift in the poem’s focus?
Use to A Daughter With Artistic Talent to answer question
The final line of the poem suggests that —
Use to A Daughter With Artistic Talent to answer question
Lines 20 and 21 suggest that the speaker —