Poetry journal patron: Everybody

Answer choices

1. A

   Too Weak12% picked this

   Neither The Brick Wall Review nor the other magazine under discussion depends on donations to

   This limits the amount that the magazine under discussion can reduce its dependence on donations, but does not make it less likely that the magazine could depend less on donations.

   12%
2. B

   Too Weak / Out of Scope3% picked this

   Many of the poets whose work appears in The Brick Wall Review have had several poems rejected for publication by

   This could be just two or three poets. Furthermore, that the magazine rejected several poems by authors whose work appears in the Brick Wall Review is not relevant. The works rejected did not even necessarily appear in the Brick Wall Review. The poets could have submitted different poems to each magazine.

   3%
3. C

   Too Weak5% picked this

   The only compensation poets receive for publishing in the regular issues of the magazines under discussion are free copies of the issues

   This does not provide a material difference between the two magazines.

   5%
4. D

   Strengthen23% picked this

   The Brick Wall Review depends on donations to cover most operating expenses not covered by

   This makes the two magazines more similar and thereby more comparable.

   23%
5. E

   Correct57% picked this

   The Brick Wall Review's annual poetry anthology always contains a number of poems by famous poets not published in the

   Why this is right

   This is a pretty brutally thin answer, but something that raises doubt can be the strongest weakener if everything else does nothing or goes the wrong way. The argument's reason for thinking that our anthology would do well, like BRW's has, was that most of our published poems are similar to BRW's. The author is therefore assuming that people are predominantly buying these BRW anthologies in order to have access to a collection of poems similar to what's published in our magazine and in regular editions of BRW. This answer is suggesting a possible line of objection, "Yo, author -- the only reason people are buying the BRW anthology is for the poems by famous poets that weren't published in the regular issues! I don't think the anthology would work for us, since we don't have famous poets contributing cool stuff that's worth buying." This is a pretty big leap for a correct answer. For this answer to have impact, we have to assume a significant of people who buy the anthology do so for the sake of the "bonus poems" from famous poets. And we have to assume that our magazine wouldn't have this same option of luring people into buying our anthology by dangling "bonus poems" from famous poets. But both of those ideas are pretty conservative. It's reasonable to think that bonus poems from famous people could be a compelling reason why people would both to buy a compilation of previously published poems. And it's reasonable to think that your run of the mill poetry magazine doesn't have a number of famous poets that they can easily get to contribute to their anthology. As we said at the top --- this doesn't come close to proving that an anthology wouldn't work well for our magazine, but it creates doubt about whether we really do have the matching ingredients that make BRW's anthology a success.

   Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   57%