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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. In "Asterion's Lament," what kind of a creature is "Asterion"?
(a) Half-snake and half-human.
(b) Half-fish and half-human.
(c) Half-bull and half-human.
(d) Half-bird and half-human.

2. In "These Hands, If Not Gods," the speaker makes a reference to the "hundred-handed ones." Who were these figures?
(a) The wise women who control fate.
(b) The ancient potters who created human beings.
(c) The monsters that guard the gates of the underworld.
(d) The giant offspring of Sky and Earth.

3. In "Run'n'Gun," what is a logical interpretation of the symbolic value of the fence outside the schoolyard?
(a) It stands for the "world" that education can open to underprivileged children.
(b) It stands for the insular world of reservation life.
(c) It stands for the barriers life puts in the way of poor Indian children.
(d) It stands for adults' failed attempts to keep children safe.

4. In "American Arithmetic," what does the narrator suggest is better than being invisible?
(a) Being lonely.
(b) Being loved.
(c) Being heard.
(d) Being dead.

5. In "Ink-Light," where are the speaker and her beloved?
(a) On a riverbank.
(b) In the desert.
(c) In a hotel room.
(d) On a snowy street.

Short Answer Questions

1. In "Like Church," what fruit does the speaker say the afterlife will be full of?

2. In "Manhattan Is a Lenape Word," when the speaker claims to be the only Native person "on the 8th floor of this hotel or any," what technique is being used (14)?

3. In "Manhattan Is a Lenape Word," what is the red light metaphorically compared to?

4. What does the opening of "Postcolonial Love Poem" claim that moonstones can do?

5. On page 1 of "Postcolonial Love Poem," what technique is used in the lines, "The seeds sleep like geodes beneath hot feldspar sand"?

Short Essay Questions

1. In "Run'n'Gun," what life lessons does the speaker learn from playing basketball?

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

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

4. In "Like Church," what claim is made about what whites compare Native people to?

5. What is the speaker's argument for her hands as "gods" in "These Hands, If Not Gods"?

6. Explain the central conceit in the poem "Catching Copper."

7. What play on the word "race" is used in "American Arithmetic"?

8. What does the speaker mean in "They Don't Love You Like I Love You" when she says that she can see through maps?

9. In "Skin-Light," what is the "work of all good yokes" (22)?

10. In "Blood-Light," what do the scorpions represent, and how does the reader know this?

(see the answer keys)

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