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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. Which poem begins with the line, "And the last perhaps will not return"?
(a) "Woman's Lament II."
(b) "The Lovers."
(c) "Woman's Lament I."
(d) "Greek Love-Talk."

2. In the second of "The Seven Phallic Poems," who does the poet claim is "drawing my seed up into an abrupt tree"?
(a) A garden.
(b) Summer.
(c) A maiden.
(d) Love.

3. In "The Seven Phallic Poems," who "grasps suddenly the bull bud of his vitality"?
(a) The rose-gatherer.
(b) The maiden.
(c) The gardener.
(d) The soldier.

4. The translator claims that the poems in "Rilke's Poems on Love" deserve to take their place alongside whose great love poems?
(a) Dante's.
(b) Byron's.
(c) Shelley's.
(d) Ovid's.

5. In what poem does Rilke write "Life and death: they are one, at core intertwined"?
(a) "The Poems Praise."
(b) "Woman's Lament II."
(c) "The Poet Speaks of Praising."
(d) "The Poet Praises."

Short Answer Questions

1. This first poem in "Rilke's Poems on Other Difficulties" is titled what?

2. Rilke writes of love that "So whoever loves must try to act as if he had a _________."

3. In "The Poet Praises," Rilke writes, "Maidens, you warm ones, maidens, you mute and dumb, / dance the taste of the experienced _____!"

4. Rilke writes in "The Seven Phallic Poems," "We close ______ by means of our gazes."

5. What does Rilke write in Part V of "The Seven Phallic Poems" has "weakened you and me"?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Rilke regard the difficulty of sex in his opening letters?

2. What is the poet writing about in "The Poet Praises"?

3. What is the subject and imagery in the poem "Magic"?

4. What references to Venus does Rilke make in the untitled poems of "Poems of Other Difficulties"?

5. What does Rilke say regarding the institute of marriage and solitude?

6. In the untitled poems following "The Lovers," what imagery does the poet use?

7. Discuss the imagery and symbolism in the poems "From the Cycle: Nights" and "Force of Gravity."

8. In the fourth and fifth of The Seven Phallic Poems, what imagery does the poet use for climax?

9. What metaphors does Rilke use for a woman's womb in The Seven Phallic Poems?

10. What are the subjects discussed in the "Woman's Lament" poems?

(see the answer keys)

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