Question

Which element of modernist poetry is evident in this excerpt from "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" by Langston Hughes?

Answer 1

Answer:

If your options are:

A. The poem uses variations of meter to affect rhyme.

B. The poem’s sentences flow across stanzas.

C. The poem’s stanzas have varying lengths.

D. The poem uses nontraditional syntax and rhyme scheme.

Then the answer is D.

Explanation:

The nontraditional syntax is best shown in the use of enjambment - interrupting the thought and syntactic structure in the middle and moving the rest to the next line. For example: "and older than the // flow of human blood (...)"

Here, the definite article "the" has been separated from the noun "flow", which means the phrase is visually broken in half.

• A isn't true because this poem conveys its meaning through rhythm and not rhyme. There are virtually no rhymes here and the syntax (sentence structure) is disrupted, invoking the sound of a river flowing in irregular but consistent waves.

• B isn't true because the sentences do flow across lines but not across stanzas.
• The stanzas do have varying lengths. But even though this element was pretty rare prior to the 20th century, it is not exclusive to modernist poetry. That's why C isn't true either.