Question

Which statement describes the difference in tone between the first half and the second half of "Poem"? A:The first half is philosophical; the second half portrays reality.
B:The first half is optimistic; the second half is more ominous.
C:The first half suggests indifference; the second half is more promising. D:The first half questions authority; the second half approves of commercialism.

Poem:
I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.

I lived in the first century of these wars.

Answer 1

As you're reading along the poem, it tells a tale of stories that seem to be pouring out of all the news sources and that there are so many that people seem to not care. In the latter part of the poem it seems that the writer is more cognizant of the fact that the people behind the stories meant something, so maybe the news was important after all. The answer is C.

Answer 2

Rukeyser wrote this poem in 1968 amidst the Vietnam war, Civil Rights Movement and similar political and social trends. The poem has got a morning and evening phases, respectively describing war and peace where the evening phase begins with the lines "As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened". The content of the lines is associated with the peace and the victory of this idea. Therefore, the correct answer is C.