SAT OwlQuestion bank / Words in Context
Scholars have described the poet's late work as ______. In contrast to the dense, allusive poems of her youth, the poems she wrote in her seventies are spare and direct, rarely more than a dozen lines long, with scarcely an adjective among them.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
ornate
austere
erudite
whimsical
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B
The late poems are "spare and direct," short, and nearly free of adjectives. "Austere" means plain and without ornament, so it fits.
Choice C, "erudite," better describes the "dense, allusive" early poems, which the text contrasts with the late work.
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