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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. What is the title of the poem which begins, "Center, how you draw yourself out"?
(a) "Music."
(b) "From the Cycle: Nights."
(c) "Force of Gravity."
(d) "Magic."

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

3. Over what does the poet write, "we will together contend" in "Greek Love-Talk"?
(a) Your breasts.
(b) This war.
(c) The forest.
(d) Our love.

4. In one untitled poem of "Rilke's Poems on Other Difficulties," Rilke writes, "Play the ____, the single ones, quickly and you..."
(a) Harps.
(b) Kisses.
(c) Deaths.
(d) Loves.

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

Short Answer Questions

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

2. In Rilke's one-line poem of the love poems, he writes, "This is the mute-mouthed mounting of the ______."

3. In the second of "The Seven Phallic Poems," who does the poet claim is "drawing my seed up into an abrupt tree"?

4. Rilke remarks in his letters that his sex is "not directed only toward posterity" but is is what?

5. In the seventh of "The Seven Phallic Poems," what does the poet write that his "semen climbs gladly like"?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Rilke write of using the metaphor of water, song, and play in his untitled poems?

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

3. How does death intermingle with sex in The Seven Phallic Poems? How does childhood?

4. What does Rilke say of questions and answers in his first essay?

5. Discuss the subjects and imagery of "The Poems Praise."

6. In the untitled poems of "Rilke's Poems of Other Difficulties," how does Rilke write of the gods?

7. What does Mood say in regard to Rilke's vision of Eros in the Prologue?

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

9. What does Rilke say regarding the young and marriage in his letters?

10. What reference does Rilke use to the god Hermes in The Seven Phallic Poems?

(see the answer keys)

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