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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 "The First Water Is the Body," what protest does the speaker mention?
(a) The Occupation of Alcatraz.
(b) Occupy Wall Street.
(c) Standing Rock.
(d) The Women's March on Washington.

2. In "Waist and Sway," the page 78 line "Oh, City--where hands turned holy" is an example of what literary technique?
(a) Apostrophe.
(b) Epistrophe.
(c) Assonance.
(d) Anaphora.

3. In "My Brother, My Wound," to what does the speaker compare the light in the holes in the walls?
(a) Stars.
(b) Canaries.
(c) Yellow jackets.
(d) Butterflies.

4. In "The Cure for Melancholy Is to Take the Horn," what does the speaker claim to have been changed into?
(a) A honeycomb.
(b) A seraph.
(c) A castle.
(d) A queen.

5. What name for the Mojave people does the speaker share in "The First Water Is the Body"?
(a) Te'po'ta'ahl.
(b) Achumawi.
(c) 'Aha Makav.
(d) Me-wuk.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. From its context in "Top Ten Reasons Why Indians Are Good at Basketball," what can be assumed about the Hotchkiss and Springfield Model 1873?

3. In "exhibits from The American Water Museum," whose admission price is "the kidneys" (64)?

4. In the opening of "How the Milky Way Was Made," what aspect of the Colorado before its damming is stressed?

5. In "I, Minotaur," the speaker uses the word "Minotauromachy." Where does this word come from?

Short Essay Questions

1. In what two senses can the title "My Brother, My Wound" be interpreted?

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

3. In "The First Water Is the Body," what point does the speaker make about the limitations of words?

4. In "Ode to the Beloved's Hips," what is the rhetorical function of the lines: "I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock/ right now" (37)?

5. In "The First Water Is the Body," what are the speaker's concerns about explaining to a non-Indian audience that for her people, the river and the body are one thing?

6. In "It Was the Animals," who comes to the speaker's house, and what is that person carrying?

7. In the opening of "Snake-Light," what does the speaker literally see in the desert, and to what does she compare it?

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. What two conceits are central to "If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert"?

10. 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?

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This section contains 980 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample