Crossing the Swamp FRQ

Read the following poem carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze the techniques the poet uses to develop the relationship between the speaker and the swamp.

NOTE:
This question assesses your ability to do the following: • Respond to the prompt with a thesis that presents a defensible interpretation. • Select and use evidence to develop and support your line of reasoning. • Examine how the evidence supports your line of reasoning. • Use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating the argument.

Crossing the Swamp Here is the endless wet thick cosmos, the center of everything—the nugget of dense sap, branching vines, the dark burred faintly belching bogs. Here is swamp, here is struggle, closure— pathless, seamless, peerless mud. My bones knock together at the pale joints, trying for foothold, fingerhold, mindhold over such slick crossings, deep hipholes, hummocks that sink silently into the black, slack earthsoup. I feel not wet so much as painted and glittered with the fat grassy mires, the rich and succulent marrows of earth— a poor dry stick given one more chance by the whims of swamp water— a bough that still, after all these years, could take root, sprout, branch out, bud— make of its life a breathing palace of leaves