Question

questions 7 through 15 refer to the following.
read the following poem carefully before you choose your answers.
maggie anderson’s poem “among elms and maples, morgantown, west virginia, august 1935” was published in 1986.
among elms and maples, morgantown, west virginia, august 1935
houses are wedged between the tall stacks 1
of seneca glass beside the monongahela 2
and waffle up steep hills. here, the terrain
allows photographers to appear acrobatic.
5 walker evans 3 liked standing on a hill, focusing
down so it seemed he was poised on a branch.
he liked the single telephone pole against
the flat sky, crossed off - center like a crucifix.
beneath it, among elms and maples, is the house
10 my mother lived in with her sister and their mother
nearly fifty years ago. in this shot, evans
only wanted the rough surfaces of clapboard
houses, their meshed roofs and slanted gables.
he didn’t want my mother peeling the thin skin
from tomatoes with a sharp knife, my clumsy
15 aunt grace chasing the ones she’d dropped
around the linoleum floor. that would be another
picture, not this one. i look back from the future,
past the undulating, unremitting line of hills
20 evans framed my family in, through the shaggy fronds
of summer ferns he used as foreground and as border.

9
in lines 3 - 6 (“here... branch”), the speaker’s description of evans’ photography techniques as “acrobatic” suggests that the photographer’s relationship to his surroundings is
a calculated and artificial
b hostile and predatory
c reverent and careful
d innovative and unique

Explanation:

To solve this, we analyze the lines 3 - 6: "Walker Evans [3] liked standing on a hill, focusing down so it seemed he was poised on a branch. He liked the single telephone pole against the flat sky, crossed off - center like a crucifix. Beneath it, among elms and maples, is the house my mother lived in with her sister and their mother nearly fifty years ago." The description of Evans' photography technique as "acrobatic" (implying a careful, deliberate positioning) and his focus on the scene (like the telephone pole and the house) suggests a reverent (respectful) and careful approach to his surroundings. Option A's "calculated and artificial" is incorrect as there's no artificiality. Option B's "hostile and predatory" is wrong as the tone is not hostile. Option D's "innovative and unique" is not supported as the description is more about care and reverence than innovation. So the correct option is C.

Answer:

C. reverent and careful