Due to their often strange images, highly experimental syntax, and opaque subject matter, many of John Ashbery's poems can be...
GMAT Craft and Structure : (Structure) Questions
Due to their often strange images, highly experimental syntax, and opaque subject matter, many of John Ashbery's poems can be quite difficult to _______ and thus are the object of heated debate among scholars.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
delegate
compose
interpret
renounce
Step 1: Decode and Map the Passage
Create Passage Analysis Table
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
|---|---|
| 'Due to their often strange images, highly experimental syntax, and opaque subject matter,' |
|
| 'many of John Ashbery's poems can be quite difficult to ______' |
|
| 'and thus are the object of heated debate among scholars.' |
|
Provide Passage Architecture and Core Elements
Visual Structure Map: CAUSE (Strange characteristics of poems) leads to EFFECT (Difficult to blank) leads to CONSEQUENCE (Scholarly debate)
Main Point: John Ashbery's poems are challenging due to their unusual characteristics, making them subjects of scholarly disagreement.
Argument Flow: The sentence establishes a cause-and-effect relationship where the unusual features of Ashbery's poems create difficulty in some academic task, which then leads to scholarly debate about their meaning.
Step 2: Interpret the Question Precisely
This is a fill-in-the-blank question asking us to choose the best logical connector. The answer must create the right relationship between what comes before and after the blank.
Step 3: Prethink the Answer
- The missing word needs to describe what scholars do with poems that would be made difficult by strange images, highly experimental syntax, and opaque subject matter
- Since these characteristics make the poems hard to understand, and this difficulty leads to heated debate among scholars, we need a word that describes an intellectual activity that scholars perform on literary works
- The word should be something that becomes challenging when dealing with unclear, experimental content and would naturally lead to disagreement among experts
delegate
- Delegate means to assign tasks or authority to others
- Makes no sense in the context of analyzing poems
- Scholars do not delegate poems to other people
compose
- Compose means to create or write
- The poems already exist since Ashbery wrote them
- Scholars study existing poems, they do not create new Ashbery poems
interpret
- Interpret means to explain or understand the meaning of something
- Perfectly fits the context since strange images and experimental syntax would make poems hard to interpret
- This difficulty in interpretation would naturally lead to scholarly debate about meaning
- Matches exactly what literary scholars do with complex poetry
renounce
- Renounce means to formally reject or give up
- Does not make logical sense because why would strange characteristics make poems difficult to reject?
- Would not lead to heated scholarly debate