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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 "My Brother, My Wound," to what does the speaker's brother compare her wound?
(a) Open mouths.
(b) A rose garden.
(c) Jesus's wounds.
(d) Holes in the desert.

2. In "The Cure for Melancholy Is to Take the Horn," what Russian-American poet is quoted?
(a) Peter Orlovsky.
(b) Vladimir Nabokov.
(c) Walter Benton.
(d) Joseph Brodsky.

3. In "That Which Cannot Be Stilled," what does the speaker say can "make you clean" (42)?
(a) Ash.
(b) Sand.
(c) Rain.
(d) Grief.

4. In "Cranes, Mafiosos, and a Polaroid Camera," to what object does the speaker compare her camera?
(a) A telephone.
(b) A gun.
(c) A mirror.
(d) A poem.

5. In "The First Water Is the Body," what river does the author specifically discuss?
(a) The Blackfoot River.
(b) The Salmon River.
(c) The Green River.
(d) The Colorado River.

Short Answer Questions

1. In "Ode to the Beloved's Hips," the speaker describes something as "Maenad." What is this a reference to?

2. On page 87 of "Snake-Light," why does the speaker's great-grandmother tell her they do not eat snakes?

3. In "If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert," to whom does the speaker allude when she says "Each steaming bowl will be, Just right" (81)?

4. In "That Which Cannot Be Stilled," what American poet's death is mentioned?

5. In "My Brother, My Wound," what does the speaker's brother say the word "canaries" really means?

Short Essay Questions

1. In "Grief Work," what is the symbolic significance of the poem's final sequence in which the speaker and her beloved are in the river?

2. In "exhibits from The American Water Museum," what does the guidebook say?

3. In "Snake-Light," what does the speaker say happens when the word "Hikwiir" is said aloud (84)?

4. In "That Which Cannot Be Stilled," what is the speaker's recurring dream?

5. In "exhibits from The American Water Museum," what story does the rock painting tell, and what is its significance to the speaker?

6. In "How the Milky Way Was Made," what does the speaker say about Coyote?

7. In "Isn't the Air Also a Body, Moving?" what leads the speaker to call the train caboose the best part of a train?

8. In "Top Ten Reasons Why Indians Are Good at Basketball," what is the double entente in the line, "as it rips down through the net, our enemies will fall to their wounded knees, with torn ACLs" (41)?

9. Explain the metaphor "Transubstantiation bone--hips of bread,/ wine-whet thighs" in "Ode to the Beloved's Hips" (37).

10. In "That Which Cannot Be Stilled," what happens when the speaker goes to the hospital for a panic attack?

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