Question

Read Rita Dove’s poem "Sonnet in Primary Colors,” then study Frida Kahlo’s painting Self-Portrait with Monkey and Parrot.

This is for the woman with one black wing
perched over her eyes: lovely Frida, erect
among parrots, in the stern petticoats of the peasant,
who painted herself a present—
wildflowers entwining the plaster corset
her spine resides in, that flaming pillar—
this priestess in the romance of mirrors.

Each night she lay down in pain and rose
to the celluloid butterflies of her Beloved Dead,
Lenin and Marx and Stalin arrayed at the footstead.
And rose to her easel, the hundred dogs panting
like children along the graveled walks of the garden, Diego’s
love a skull in the circular window
of the thumbprint searing her immutable brow.

A painting titled Self-Portrait with Monkey and Parrot by Frida Kahlo, showing Frida posing with a dark-furred monkey and a green parrot. The multi-colored leaves of plants are in the background.

Which statements best describe differences in the style of the two works?

The painting pays attention to details of Kahlo’s physical appearance, while the poem does not.
The poem portrays the painter as serious, while the painting does not.
The poem reveals details that explain Kahlo’s facial expressions, while the painting does not.
The painting uses imagery that tells of Kahlo’s connection to nature, while the poem does not.

Answer 1

Correct answers: 1 and 3.

Brief justification:
- The painting focuses on visual, physical detail (Kahlo’s face, the monkey and parrot, the multicolored leaves), whereas Dove’s sonnet emphasizes symbolic, interior elements (pain, corset, politics, memory) rather than a literal physical description.
- The poem supplies biographical and psychological context (injury, grief, political and romantic associations) that helps explain Kahlo’s expression; the painting shows the expression but does not by itself give that explanatory context.