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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Poems on Other Difficulties.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. This first poem in "Rilke's Poems on Other Difficulties" is titled what?
(a) "The Poet Praises."
(b) "The Cycle of Night."
(c) "The Poems Praise."
(d) "The Poet Speaks of Praising."

2. One of the shortest of the love poems consists of the following two lines: "Also to affirm even ______ / like a thing."
(a) Woman.
(b) Rapture.
(c) Love.
(d) Lust.

3. What, with absinthe, "trickle through silent sieves of kisses of bitter essence"?
(a) Lust.
(b) Fairies.
(c) Wormwood.
(d) Arsenic.

4. Writing of one of his principle motifs, the poet writes, "Transform stamen on stamen, / fill your interior _____."
(a) Heart.
(b) Rose.
(c) Pitcher.
(d) Death.

5. In Rilke's first letter he suggests to the reader to "resolve to be always" what?
(a) Failing.
(b) Beginning.
(c) Ending.
(d) Trying.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which poem begins with the line, "And the last perhaps will not return"?

2. Of what fruit does Rilke write of in "The Poet Praises"?

3. In which poem does Rilke begin, "She who sleeps... To be so very awake, / near pure waking, that we into sleepers grow"?

4. Who does Rilke say is incapable of such loving as he calls for?

5. In a very short untitled poem, Rilke writes, "The voices warned me so I _____."

(see the answer key)

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