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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In "That Which Cannot Be Stilled," where does the speaker's recurring dream take place?

2. What unusual typographic device is contained in "exhibits from The American Water Museum"?

3. In "Top Ten Reasons Why Indians Are Good at Basketball," what does the speaker claim that basketball is identical with?

4. In "It Was the Animals," what has the speaker's brother actually found?

5. In "Waist and Sway," the page 78 line "Oh, City--where hands turned holy" is an example of what literary technique?

Short Essay Questions

1. In "Cranes, Mafiosos, and a Polaroid Camera," what does the speaker's brother request, and why?

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

3. 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)?

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 "It Was the Animals," what does the speaker's guest tell her the inscription is, and what is it in reality?

6. In "Waist and Sway," what temptation is the speaker trying to resist, and what is the outcome?

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

8. In "Snake-Light," what comparison does the speaker make between snakes and writing?

9. What is the setting of "Waist and Sway," and how is its setting unusual for this collection?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay in which you explore the motif of "thirst" in Postcolonial Love Poem. What is the source of the speaker's thirst, and how does she seek to quench that thirst? Provide support from at least five of the collection's poems.

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay that traces the development of the "hips" motif in Postcolonial Love Poem. Show how different poems develop differing aspects of this motif and make a claim about its overall meaning within the collection.

Essay Topic 3

Write an analysis of the function of scientific terms in the diction of Diaz's poetry. You may choose to focus your analysis on one poem or on several; be sure to use quoted evidence in support of your claims.

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