12. read the poem. 15 points my cat a bump of black and white is purring in my bed. and later on at night i find him near my head. the pillow quakes and quivers like pudding on a plate. he wakes me up at midnight. i sure hope he sleeps late! how does the rhyme scheme of this poem affect the poem’s mood? a. the rhyme scheme creates a sentimental mood. b. the poem’s rhyme scheme emphasizes how tired the speaker is. c. the complex rhyme scheme emphasizes the speaker's exasperation. d. the poem’s simple rhyme scheme creates a lighthearted mood.

[1] nothing that comes from the desert expresses its extremes better than the unhappy growth of the tree yuccas. tormented, thin forests of it stalk drearily in the high mesas, particularly in that triangular slip that fans out eastward from the meeting of the sierras and coastwise hills. the yucca bristles with bayonet-pointed leaves, dull green, growing shaggy with age like an old [5] man's tangled gray beard, tipped with panicles of foul, greenish blooms. after its death, which is slow, the ghostly hollow network of its woody skeleton, with hardly power to rot, makes even the moonlight fearful. but it isn't always this way. before the yucca has come to flower, while yet its bloom is a luxurious, creamy, cone-shaped bud of the size of a small cabbage, full of sugary sap. the indians twist it deftly out of its fence of daggers and roast the prize for their [10] own delectation why does the author use the words "bayonet-pointed" (line 4) and "fence of daggers" (line 9) to describe the leaves of the yucca tree? . to create an image of the sharp edges of the plant to emphasize how beautiful the plant's leaves are to explain when and where the plant grows to show how afraid the author is of the plant

Which of these phrases is an example of understatement?

Read the excerpt from the odyssey. now zeus the lord of cloud roused in the north a storm against the ships, and driving veils of squall moved down like night on land and sea. the bows went plunging at the gust; sails cracked and lashed out strips in the big wind. we saw death in that fury, dropped the yards, unshipped the oars, and pulled for the nearest lee: then two long days and nights we lay offshore worn out and sick at heart, tasting our grief, until a third dawn came with ringlets shining. which key details should be included in a paraphrase of this passage? check all that apply. the storm was a direct result of zeus’s fury at the men. for two days and nights, zeus created a storm at sea. odysseus and his men feared greatly for their lives. the sails on the ship cracked in the heavy winds. the men felt grief as they lay offshore and waited