Passage Cross-Purposes
Cross-Purposes
What I am is built: concrete and steel.
I defy gravity. I am what every athlete
wants: to remain at the apex of the leap,
up in the air. And yet I am useful, too:
cars, trucks, people, even trains
make their way across my broad back.
Swallows and ospreys nest in my trusses.
What I am is motion. I am water, and I am older
than anything else you know. No human
built me. I am gravity’s best friend; I pool
and flow wherever gravity takes me.
I am the blood flowing in the runner’s chest,
and I catch everything: from the hills,
the mountains. It all washes down through me.
What you are is an accident,
what happens to rain when rain gives in
to Earth’s gravitational pull.
You are some tears dribbling from a mountain’s
eye, running down the pavements
of small towns, into the cities, to the sea.
You are the path of least resistance.
What I am is power. You, of course,
have none: you are a static lump, an artifact
slowly decaying. But my regal flow
nourishes grasses, permits empires to rise.
Those who made you will break you,
in time, replacing you with yet another
clumsy structure. I have seen. I know.
“Clumsy”? Being rebuilt makes me
a friend of time, does it not? And it means
that I have siblings—those “clumsy” structures,
my sisters and brothers.
We stitch across the rip you make.
We are steel thread to the human needle.
We bind you up. We sew you.
And I sow into you; in every cranny
of your superstructure my vapors cling.
They bring out your softness, your rust.
Boast your best, and boast better yet.
I am listening to the bright hum
of the wind in your wires. Because I am,
above all else, patient. I will wait for you.
ospreys: large birds
Question
How does the poet develop the points of view of the structure and the water?
- Aby relating a discussion between them about the future of human civilization
- Bby narrating a debate they have over their impact on the environment
- Cby illustrating the unique power they each possess over nature
- Dby using personification to allow them to debate who is more important
Show the answer
Correct answer: D
The Answer is (D)
The question asks how the poet develops the two points of view. The poet develops the two speakers’ points of view by personifying (giving human characteristics to something nonhuman, such as an object or animal) the structure and the water, allowing them to debate by criticizing each other and declaring their own importance. Thus, Option D is correct.
Option A is incorrect because future civilizations do not play a significant role in the development of points of view.
Option B is incorrect because, while the speakers do discuss their impact on the environment, there is no narrator speaking for them.
Option C is incorrect because these details do not convey points of view.
Question analysis
This question asks how the poet of “Cross-Purposes” develops the points of view of its two speakers, a structure and the water. Students must decide both how the poet presents the two voices and what the exchange between them is mainly about, and each choice sounds partly true.
- Grade level
- Grade 7 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- At grade 7 Analyzing how a writer develops and contrasts two speakers' points of view is exactly what the grade 7 standard describes. The choices are short, though each mixes a method with a topic, so the demand is typical for grade 7.
- Estimated difficulty
- Moderate: several steps, or a close reading with one strong distractor.
- Thinking it demands
- Depth of knowledge 3, strategic thinking · mainly analyze
- What makes it hard
- How, not what moderate
- Something you must already know minor
- Every choice must be checked minor
- Evidence
- Answered from the whole text
- Reading level
- Passage: 316 words (a poem; reading level not measured); question and choices: about grade 9, 61 words.
- Students, last 30 days
- Not enough answers yet to show (it takes 10).
Why it is hard, traps and wrong answers (shows the answer)
Why it is hard
Each choice joins a way of presenting the speakers with a subject for their exchange, and most get one half right. The poem gives no narrator and no neutral voice, only two personified things arguing about which of them matters more, so students must check the method and the topic separately. The close miss is the debate described as narrated and as being about the environment.
How, not what moderate Working it out
The question asks for the poet's method, so a choice must name how the voices are built, personified speakers trading boasts and insults, not just what they talk about. (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001)
Something you must already know minor Working it out
The key uses the literary term “personification,” which the poem never names, so students must recognize talking concrete and water as that device. (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001)
Every choice must be checked minor Choosing the answer
Each choice pairs a method with a topic, a discussion, a debate, an illustration, so both halves must be checked against the six stanzas. (Embretson & Wetzel, 1987)
Strategy: Reread the stanzas in order and note who speaks, to whom, and what each speaker says; then test both halves of each choice against those notes.
Traps
- Half right: One half of a two-part choice is right and the other is not.
- Wrong purpose or structure: Names a purpose, structure or effect that the part does not serve, or describes what a part says when the question asks what it does.
The wrong answers, classified
A Too narrow (King et al., 2004)
Takes passing mentions, “permits empires to rise” and “the human needle,” as the subject of the exchange, though the speakers argue about themselves, not civilization's future.
B Half right (King et al., 2004; Thissen, Steinberg & Fitzpatrick, 1989)
Gets the debate right but adds a narrator, though the speakers talk for themselves, and the argument is over who matters more, not the environment.
C Wrong purpose or structure (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001)
Describes the powers each speaker claims, what the poem says, rather than the device the poet uses to develop their viewpoints.
Working it out, step by step
Figure out what the question asks
This asks about the poet’s method. How does the poet show us what each speaker thinks? The right choice must name both the method and the topic correctly.
Notice who speaks
Read the stanzas in order. The structure speaks first, then the water, and they take turns. There is no narrator (a storyteller outside the action). Each one talks to the other as “you” and brags about itself. The structure says, “I am useful, too.” The water says, “What I am is power.”
Name the method
A bridge and water can’t really talk. The poet gives them human voices. That is personification: giving human traits to things that are not human.
Through those voices, they argue. Each tries to prove it matters more. The water calls the structure “a static lump,” which means a lump that doesn’t move. The structure calls the water “an accident.”
Check each choice
- A Empires come up only once. The speakers argue about themselves, not the future.
- B There is a debate, but no narrator tells it. And it is about who matters more, not the environment.
- C This names powers the speakers claim. It does not say how the poet builds their views.
- D fits. Personification lets them argue about who is more important.
Choose the answer
The poet uses personification so the two can argue about who matters more. So the answer is D.
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
B is the closest trap, because there really is a debate. But “narrating” means a storyteller tells it, and no one does. The speakers talk for themselves. B also gets the topic wrong. D gets both the method and the topic right.
More questions like this
The original DOE question
The passage “Cross-Purposes” as printed (pages 72–73)
