The reading comprehension section of the SHSAT always includes at least one poem. The questions associated with these poems are often the most difficult for students.
Across all of the official SHSAT practice tests, there are only eight poems:
- 2021–2022 Form A: “Ode to Fireworks”
- 2021–2022 Form B: “Serpent Mound”
- 2022–2023 Form A: “Bird Talk” by Carl Sandburg
- 2022–2023 Form B: “Looking for the Smallest Spark of Everything”
- 2023–2024 Form A: “Letter from Brooklyn” by Jacob Scheier
- 2023–2024 Form B: “Cross-Purposes”
- 2024–2025 Form A: “At Dusk” by Natasha Trethewey
- 2024–2025 Form B: “Snowy Mountains” by John Gould Fletcher
Commonalities Among the Poems
- Themes:
- Nature and its significance: Most of the poems explore natural elements like mountains, fireworks, and animals, often contrasting them with human life or structures.
- Time and transition: Changes in seasons, the passage of time, and the impermanence of human creations recur in poems like “Looking for the Smallest Spark of Everything” and “Snowy Mountains.”
- Connection and isolation: Several poems reflect on relationships, such as between humans and animals in “At Dusk” or between past and present in “Letter from Brooklyn.”
- Exploration of identity and perspective: Poems like “Ode to Fireworks” and “Cross-Purposes” reflect on self-awareness and the interplay of viewpoints.
- Imagery:
- Rich natural imagery (fireflies, rivers, mountains).
- Juxtaposition of human-made structures and natural elements (bridges, fireworks, urban settings).
- Sensory details, often invoking sounds (e.g., bird calls, water’s flow).
- Style:
- Free verse with minimal or no rhyme.
- Use of personification (e.g., mountains as sentient in “Snowy Mountains”).
- Reflective and meditative tone.
50 Similar Poems Ranked by Similarity
Highly Similar (Nature, Passage of Time, Free Verse, Reflective Tone)
- “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost
- “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost
- “A Noiseless Patient Spider” by Walt Whitman
- “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” by Walt Whitman
- “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth
- “Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
- “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Sara Teasdale
- “Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
- “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
- “To Autumn” by John Keats
- “Song of Myself” (excerpts) by Walt Whitman
- “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold
- “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas
- “After Apple-Picking” by Robert Frost
- “The Snow Man” by Wallace Stevens
- “Design” by Robert Frost
- “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot
- “Ariel” by Sylvia Plath
- “To a Skylark” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
- “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats
Moderately Similar (Focus on Reflection, City/Nature Contrast, Observations)
- “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot
- “In a Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound
- “The Idea of Order at Key West” by Wallace Stevens
- “Chicago” by Carl Sandburg
- “Preludes” by T.S. Eliot
- “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens
- “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth
- “Composed upon Westminster Bridge” by William Wordsworth
- “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe
- “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” by Walt Whitman
Thematically Related (Exploring Life, Connection, Isolation)
- “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe
- “The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats
- “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson
- “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain” by Emily Dickinson
- “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” by Emily Dickinson
- “Home Burial” by Robert Frost
- “On the Beach at Night Alone” by Walt Whitman
- “Sea Fever” by John Masefield
- “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley
- “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas
Similar Imagery or Tone
- “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost
- “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath
- “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver
- “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver
- “Morning Song” by Sylvia Plath
- “A Blessing” by James Wright
- “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop
- “The Armadillo” by Elizabeth Bishop
- “For the Time Being” by W.H. Auden
- “Night Journey” by Theodore Roethke
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