The City Planners by Margaret Atwood

How does the poet’s use of the words sanities, levelness, and rational affect the tone of the poem?

• She purposefully chooses words which are nostalgic and remind the audience of the past.

• She purposefully chooses words which convey a sense of urgency about urban problems.

• She purposefully chooses words which will persuade and advise the audience against spontaneity.

• She purposefully chooses words which sound neutral to convey the idea of uniformity in suburban life.

What does the phrase “rational whine” mean in line 11?

• unusual designs

• a broken machine

• a routine activity

• unseen distractions

What is the purpose of the figurative language in the lines below?

'.......than the rational whine of a power mower

cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass'

• to show how much the speaker dislikes yard work

• to show how badly the landscape has been maintained

• to show how the equipment is unable to operate correctly

• to show how nature is not easily forced into a pattern

Which phrase provides a contrast to the uniformity of the neighborhood?

• “the roofs all display / the same slant of avoidance”

• “a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise”

• “a plastic hose poised in a vicious / coil”

• “the too-fixed stare of the wide windows”

How does the poem’s structure reveal conflicts between the ideals of the speaker and those of the City Planners?

• The speaker’s complaints in the opening stanzas transition to the adverse description of the City Planners in the last stanzas.

• Each stanza provides lengthy descriptions of the City Planners’ thoughts and minimal descriptions of the speaker’s motivations.

• The long stanzas reveal positive memories for the speaker, and the short stanzas convey negative remarks about the City Planners.

• Each stanza presents an unbiased view of the speaker’s emotions and then a biased interpretation of the City Planners’ actions.

“the smell of spilled oil a faint sickness” is an an example of which literary device ..............

• allusion

• personification

• simile

• metaphor

_________________ is one of the themes that resonates through this line “gradual as glaciers that right now nobody notices”

• Pollution

• Environmental Impact

• Natural Disaster

• Climate Change

Identify the figurative device in the following line :

“when the houses, capsized, will slide”

• Sibilance

• Irony

• Allusion

• Assonance

What month and climate is referenced in the poem ?

• January - snowy and frosty

• August - dry and sunny

• April - leafy and cloudy

• September - rainy and wet

That is where the City Planners

with the insane faces of political conspirators

are scattered over unsurveyed

territories

Who is Margaret Atwood holding responsible for the urban sprawl or more boring suburbs ?

• You and me

• Herself

• Others

• Politicians and City Planners