I think that part of the article actually perfectly captures why the author's argument is wrong. Nobody cares why she put the stanza break where she did. That's not what the question is asking. The question is asking about the objective effect of the stanza break in the context of the poem. All the student is being asked to do is recognize that there is an (objective) shift in subject from one stanza to the other, and recognize what those subjects are. Moreover, the student is only being asked to choose the best answer out of the four presented, not to derive the "correct" answer.

Out of the answer choices, only one (C) fits:

> A. compare the speaker's schedule with the train's schedule [incorrect because the first stanza isn't about the speaker's schedule]

> B. ask questions to keep the reader guessing about what will happen [incorrect; the only questions in the poem are rhetorical]

> C. contrast the speaker's feelings about weekends and Mondays [correct, because the first stanza mentions feelings about the weekend, while the second is about dread for Monday]

> D. incorporate reminders for the reader about where the action takes place [incorrect, because both stanzas take place in the reader's bed]

More generally, even though the question says "why did the author...," the REAL question is "can you detect patterns well enough to understand that the test makers use very particular skin-deep definitions of 'compare/contrast/purpose,' and how to tease out something that will please them from a set of unstructured data."

Is that a legitimate question? Kind of. In fact, it's very close to the type of thing that most professionals are required to do in the business world, etc., interpreting written words based on weird rules and psychology for one's survival (in said workplace). If you see it as a test of the skill of adapting one's thinking, rather than a test of poem interpretation a la Common Core, it has some value.

Is it ethical, though, to present it to children in that skin-deep way, and get them frustrated because they may intuit that there's a deeper level to what they should be learning, but they never have the mentorship or context (or privilege!) to understand it as anything other than an arbitrary, authoritarian "gotcha?" That if you try your best to follow the instructions without the bigger picture, you are doomed to be imperfect? I think it's not ethical at all. And it's a damn shame.

Once I was introduced, via an SAT prep book, to the idea that the objective was not "what is the right answer to this SAT Verbal section question" but "how would Priscilla, who is the blandest person imaginable, answer it," I crushed it. 1490 on the PSAT, 1600 on the SAT.

I am not brilliant, but am a fantastic test taker.

"Midnight" by Sara Holbrook

    When it’s Sunday
    and it’s midnight,
    the weekend
    put back in its chest,
    the toys of recreation,
    party times
    and needed rest.


    When I lie in wait
    for Monday
    to grab me by the ear,
    throw me at the shower,
    off to school
    and when I hear
    the train at midnight
    from so many miles away . . .
    when it’s Sunday . . .
    and it’s midnight . . .
    the train
    in passing brays and boasts
    it’s steel-track-straight,
    on schedule,
    arrival times to keep.
    And I meander to its rhythm,
    flopping like a fish.
    Why can’t I get to sleep?
    Why can’t I get to sleep?

(I personally have never really understood poetry. Possibly because I don't have a sense of rhythm.)

To go along with the text, a quote from the article: "Only guess what? The test prep materials neglected to insert the stanza break. I texted him an image of how the poem appeared in the original publication."

Asking author's-intent questions without checking the author's intent isn't great, but asking students to explain a stanza break that doesn't exist is a particularly exciting sort of unproductive.

> (I personally have never really understood poetry. > Possibly because I don't have a sense of rhythm.)

The first thing most people think of when they think 'poetry' is patterns with a fixed meter and maybe rhyming patterns, but there's a great deal of poetry that doesn't really have either. Instead, those poems use line endings to give breaks and maybe an overarching pattern. Some of it is quite good at making use of those breaks, and they can form a rhythm of a sort, but it's not necessarily an obvious one.

This poem, though, is... weird. It almost seems like there was an attempt to use a rhythm, and then it got busted up by line breaks to try to do something else, and in the process both context and rhythm got broken to the point of making it hard to read.

This being the first time I've come across it, I can't say I'm a fan of the poem. It's alright, but there are strange choices made by the author that I can't get past.

> Nobody cares why she put the stanza break where she did. That's not what the question is asking.

I agree that this is true, but it's worth pointing out that the question does actually say "allows the poet to". Recognizing that the poet's intent is irrelevant means deciding to ignore the explicit text of the question in favor of obeying the internal logic of standardized testing.

Taking the question at face value, Holbrook's objection is just fine: the stanza break allows the poet to take a breath. She put a sentence break between the Sunday and Monday sections to contrast them, then added the stanza break for a different reason altogether. (Yes, the breathing point is between those two sections because they contrast, but if we're being that picky we might also argue that it's not 'allowing' contrast but accommodating an existing contrast.)

I get that most students will answer this correctly, and certainly the other three answers are more wrong than C. But I don't like the idea that "best answer presented" is an adequate standard for simple factual claims. Moreover, I watched English teachers and professors go through agonies trying to teach death of the author, largely because questions like this actively undermine any attempt to think clearly about the difference between text and creator.

Before I read the answer, I guessed it was C, even though I hadn't read the poem—because it's the only logical statement about what breaking a poem into two stanzas can do.

My point wasn't about multiple choice tests, where I have to cross out false answers to get the right one. That this is testing the wrong skill and again only reinforces the question-creators opinion, even though I might disagree with that opinion, is a completely separate topic to rant about. (side-note: Where I'm from we nearly ever had multiple choice tests)

It's that there are multiple valid alternative interpretations for the same piece of literature. One is C), while the other one is "allows the poet to add a break, when reading it out loud." Being multiple choice, it's not the best question for this point, but the authors comment is a perfect example that seemingly objective interpretations might have nothing to do with the authors real intentions. Thus I argue that they are not that objective and there a multiple valid interpretations.

You are right that, for the purpose of this exercise, the author's intent is not the issue (though it explicitly is in the next question.) This question is not the best one to make the point; take, for example, question 35 -- personally, I would pick B but can understand why someone might pick C, which might, for all I know, be the nominal answer.

The worst cases seem to be where the question-setter has a fixed idea of what the right answer is and does not understand the subject deeply enough to see that there are other issues. This has happened to me in technical interviews, as well as a test-prep class that I almost got thrown out of.

Question 35 is testing whether you know how "metaphors" work. B is correct because "putting toys back into the chest" is a metaphor for the weekend's fun-and-games being over. C cannot be correct because it's referring to the text's literal meaning ("organizing things") without giving effect to the "metaphor" call-out in the prompt.

Maybe we are looking at different versions of the article (or did you intend to reply to ascar?) In the test quoted at https://www.huffpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-so-bad..., Question 35 is this one:

35 The imagery in lines 16 through 19 helps the reader understand –

A the shift in the speaker’s attitude

B the speaker’s unpleasantness

C why the speaker has no friends

D what the speaker thinks of others

Sorry, I thought you meant "next question" in my link, not the article. As to Question 35 in the article: that is testing if you know what "imagery" means. What is imagery? It's using words to convey a sensory impression or feeling. B is the only one that describes a sensory impression or feeling.

> A the shift in the speaker’s attitude

It's not A, because the cited lines contain no reference to any shift. The rest of the poem implies a shift or mood swing, but the cited portion helps you understand the current mood, not the shift.

> B the speaker’s unpleasantness

> C why the speaker has no friends

C assumes facts not in evidence. The poem doesn't say the author has no friends. It says she is in a mood where she could not attract friends. The imagery is directed specifically to the author's unpleasantness. One can speculate that, as a result, she has no friends, but that's not necessarily true. B is the more direct and thus better answer.

> D what the speaker thinks of others

The text is talking about the author, not others. You can speculate what the author thinks about others, but that's not what the question is asking.

Interestingly, it looks like the author actually did get this one wrong.

I think her answers to several of the other questions are a bit obtuse - she's not actually unable to answer the questions, just showing how several answers could potentially relate while ignoring an obvious best. But her response here chooses C as 'obvious', then discusses how B could also apply. Even with a solid rationale for rejecting C, it's not a fantastic sign if a professional author addressing her own work genuinely gets the answer wrong.

You are construing 'contrast' as a typographical phenomenon instead of a literary device. We can perhaps forgive the poet for overlooking such a shallow idea.

I guess because of exactly how weak the 'right' answer's justification is, that they have to defend it so vigorously.

"I just put that stanza break in there because when I read it aloud (I’m a performance poet)..."

But why does she pause there? A lack of breath? (She's going to be unconscious by the end of the second stanza.) To emphasize some kind of separation in some aspect of the poem?

I have this strange feeling the author is being intentionally obtuse.