Explanation
Correct answer: D.
Choice D is the best answer because it most logically completes the text’s discussion of Craig Santos Perez’s poetic practice in Habitat Threshold. In this context, “integral” means essential or fundamentally connected. The text describes Perez’s “recycling” technique, in which he retains the syntactical and rhetorical structures (i.e., formal elements) of canonical poems but alters their content to address current environmental issues. The text further indicates that this technique invites readers to recognize how climate change has transformed seemingly familiar experiences—an effect that depends on the contrast between a poem’s recognizable inherited form and its new content. Because meaning derives from the particular way in which form and content interact in Perez’s poems, the context supports the idea that the form of these poems is integral to their meaning—in other words, form is fundamentally bound up with what the poems convey.
Why the other choices are wrong
Choice A
Choice A is incorrect because it wouldn’t make sense in context to say that the form of Perez’s poems is “antithetical,” or directly opposed, to their meaning. The text indicates that the inherited form and the new content work together to produce the poems’ effect, so the form is essential, not opposed, to the poems’ meaning.
Choice B
Choice B is incorrect because it wouldn’t make sense in context to say that the form of Perez’s poems is “resigned,” or passively accepting. “Resigned” describes an attitude held by a person, not a relationship between a poem’s form and its meaning. Moreover, the poems’ form actively contributes to their meaning; it would contradict the text to suggest that the poems’ form merely serves as a passive vehicle for meaning.
Choice C
Choice C is incorrect because it wouldn’t make sense in context to say that the form of Perez’s poems is “invulnerable,” or incapable of being harmed. The text doesn’t characterize the poems’ meanings as threats to their form; instead, it discusses how form and meaning relate.