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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is distinctive about the structure of "Blood-Light"?
(a) It is the only rhymed poem in the collection.
(b) It is grouped into two-line stanzas.
(c) If compressed, the lines would form a free-verse version of a sonnet.
(d) It uses ballad meter.

2. In "They Don't Love You Like I Love You," when the speaker says that "Maps are ghosts," what technique is being used?
(a) Synesthesia.
(b) Malapropism.
(c) Simile.
(d) Oxymoron.

3. What does the opening of "Postcolonial Love Poem" claim that moonstones can do?
(a) Stop the bleeding of a snakebite.
(b) Help you find your way home.
(c) Make someone fall in love with you.
(d) Predict the weather.

4. What does the title "Catching Copper" literally refer to?
(a) Working in a mine.
(b) Playing a game with pennies.
(c) Getting shot.
(d) Capturing an escaped dog.

5. In "These Hands, If Not Gods," the speaker refers to "ichor." What does this word mean?
(a) A strong desire to engage in sexual activity.
(b) A prolonged period of lazy satisfaction.
(c) The substance that the Greek gods had instead of blood.
(d) The wine that the gods drank on Mount Olympus.

Short Answer Questions

1. In "Manhattan Is a Lenape Word," what is the speaker's objection to her lover saying, "You make me feel like lightening" (15)?

2. In "American Arithmetic," what does the narrator suggest is better than being invisible?

3. What is implied in "Postcolonial Love Poem's" allusion to the wars "which started me, which I lost and won"?

4. In "Run'n'Gun," what is a logical interpretation of the symbolic value of the fence outside the schoolyard?

5. In "These Hands, If Not Gods," what does "the seven days of your body" allude to (7)?

Short Essay Questions

1. In "From the Desire Field," what seems to make the speaker feel better, and to what does she point as a possible, eventual cure for her sleeplessness?

2. What is the main point being made in "American Arithmetic"?

3. What relationship exists between the title "Postcolonial Love Poem" and the line, "I learned Drink in a country of drought" (1)?

4. Explain the conceit introduced by the line, "I know another name for holy is water" in "Asterion's Lament" (27).

5. What is the setting of "Manhattan Is a Lenape Word"?

6. In "Ink-Light," how are colors used to shift the poem's tone?

7. In "Wolf OR-7," what is significant about the wolf in the poem's title?

8. In "Catching Copper," what is the significance of the page 11 lines ,"My brothers feed their bullet/ the way the bulls fed Zeus"?

9. In "Asterion's Lament," what does the speaker mean by "how did Theseus find no joy in you?" (27)?

10. In "Manhattan Is a Lenape Word," what dark joke does the speaker make about reparations?

(see the answer keys)

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