SAT OwlQuestion bank / Cross-Text Connections
Text 1: Scholars have generally treated the poems of Adela Voss (1868-1931) as intensely private works. Voss rarely published during her lifetime, and her poems, full of closed rooms and drawn curtains, seem to turn away from public life. To read them as commentary on the politics of her era, these scholars argue, is to impose concerns the poet did not share.
Text 2: Voss's letters reveal that she followed newspaper coverage of labor strikes closely and discussed them with her brother, a union organizer. Read alongside these letters, the closed rooms in her poems look less like retreats from the world than like images of confinement, the same confinement Voss described when writing about factory workers. Her poems are private in form, perhaps, but not in their concerns.
Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the scholars' view described in Text 1?
By agreeing that Voss's images of closed rooms reflect her wish to withdraw from public affairs
By arguing that Voss published far more poems during her lifetime than the scholars realize
By asserting that Voss's poems should be read mainly as accounts of her brother's career
By contending that evidence outside the poems suggests that Voss's imagery may engage with political issues of her time
Show answer and explanation
Answer: D
Text 1's scholars say political readings impose concerns Voss did not share. Text 2 uses her letters, which show strong interest in labor strikes, to reread the closed rooms as images of confinement linked to workers' lives. The author would reply that outside evidence supports a political reading, as choice D states.
Choice C overstates the brother's role; he is mentioned only as someone Voss discussed the strikes with, not as the subject of her poems.
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