Question

Read the excerpt from "Surrendering” by Ocean Vuong.

I had read books that weren’t books, and I had read them using everything but my eyes. From that invisible "reading,” I had pressed my world onto paper. As such, I was a fraud in a field of language, which is to say, I was a writer. I have plagiarized my life to give you the best of me.

Which best describes the author’s diction in this paragraph?

formal
colloquial
poetic
scholarly

Answer 1

poetic

The language is lyrical and metaphorical ("read books that weren’t books," "read them using everything but my eyes," "pressed my world onto paper"), giving it a poetic rather than scholarly, formal, or casual tone.