AP English Literature

1. AP English Literature Steve Chisnell www.chisnell.com MrChiz@comcast.net

2. Cut By Sylvia Plath

3. What a thrill – My thumb instead of an onion. The top quite gone Except for a sort of a hinge Of skin, A flap like a hat, dead white. Then a red plush.

5. Voice • Diction • Detail • Imagery • Syntax • Tone

6. Art is the antidote that can call us back from the edge of numbness, restoring the ability to feel for one another. --Barbara Kingsolver

7. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered. And now that Douglas knew, really knew he was alive, and moved turning through the world to touch and see it all, it was only right and proper that some of his new knowledge, some of this special vintage day should be sealed away for opening on a January day with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for months and perhaps some of the miracle by then forgotten and in need of renewal. -- Ray Bradbury

8. She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father’s voice and her sister Margaret’s. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air. -- Kate Chopin

9. Ralph found himself taking giant strides among the ashes, heard other creatures crying out and leaping and dared the impossible on the dark slope; presently the mountains were deserted, save for the three abandoned sticks and the thing that bowed. -- William Golding

10. The next instant, quick as the flame from a discharged cannon at night, his right arm shot out, and Claggart dropped to the deck. -- Herman Melville

11. Private Shawcross did not have specifically in mind the lopping of Private Crossbow’s gangrened toes; he was looking ahead to the esculent, a dead horse in the snow, a lively but innocent buck in a green glade. -- Anthony Burgess

13. Piazza Di Spagna, Early Morning by Richard Wilbur I can’t forget How she stood at the top of that long marble stair Amazed, and then with a sleep pirouette Went dancing slowly down to the fountain-quieted square; Nothing upon her face But some impersonal loneliness—not then a girl, But as it were a reverie of the place, A called-for falling glide and whirl; As when a leaf, petal, or thin chip Is drawn to the falls of a pool and, circling a moment above it, Rides on over the lip— Perfectly beautiful, perfectly ignorant of it.