Several critics have claimed that any contemporary poet who writes formal poetry—poetry that is rhymed and metered—is...

priyap59 on December 20, 2020

bumping this^^
this was hard for me too

shunhe on January 7, 2021

Hi @Anthony-Resendes,

Thanks for the question! This is a strengthen with sufficient premise question. First, identify the conclusion, which is “this is plainly false.” What is “this”? The statement that contemporary poets who write formal poetry are performing politically conservative acts.

So now we need something that added to the premises we have already gets us to the conclusion. Take a look at (C), which says that no one who’s politically progressive is capable of performing a politically conservative act. Seems like a pretty unlikely statement, but remember, we’re assuming that all of these statements are true. And if we assume (C) is true, then the conclusion follows. Because we know we have political progressives who write formal poetry, and they’re incapable of doing politically conservative acts. So writing formal poetry can’t be a politically conservative act.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

Anthony-Resendes on May 27, 2021

@shunhe
Thanks for the response sir, I didn't see at first the reasoning behind this answer choice because I felt the answer choice that made the conclusion whole was saying no feminist is also politically conservative but this is not the case as a feminist can also be conservative. Politically progressive was the new term that was introduced that I missed that made the argument whole. The thing that threw me off though was saying that a political progressive individual is not "capable" of performing a political conservative act which isn't the case but like you said we have to take this as true and the other answer choices do not even come close, thank you!