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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. Who shows the speaker a bad luck card in "Bad Luck Card"?
(a) A random person on the street.
(b) A relative.
(c) A gypsy.
(d) A priest.

2. What does the speaker see in "Seascape"?
(a) "A line of fishing ships."
(b) "A row of soldiers on the shore."
(c) "My own future, going down with the ship."
(d) "The faces of children, dreaming of sweets."

3. What is all that a snail knows in "Snail"?
(a) Sunrise and sunset.
(b) Shell and no shell.
(c) The bottom of people's shoes.
(d) Weather and rose.

4. What does the speaker comment about one's sweetheart in "Reverie on the Harlem River"?
(a) That she's a lying, cheating fake.
(b) That she's as beautiful as the sunset.
(c) That she's as beautiful as the sunrise.
(d) That he wishes she'd never been born.

5. What asked the speaker for a kiss in "Suicide's Note"?
(a) An ugly woman.
(b) A frog.
(c) The river.
(d) A beautiful man.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the speaker encourage the reader to wonder about when down by the river?

2. What does the title "Litany" refer to?

3. Where is the dream a cocktail at in "Havana Dreams"?

4. Who is listening to the stories Aunt Sue tells in "Aunt Sue's Stories"?

5. What did the speaker's mother say when life hurt her in the poem "Spirituals"?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does the use of the word "fragment" in a poem title imply?

2. What does the speaker hope in the poem "Island"?

3. Why is the "After Hours" section of "Selected Poems of Langston Hughes" named what it is?

4. Why is the speaker so surprised by his girlfriend's snoring in "Morning After"?

5. What exactly is the Black Pierrot mentioned in the poem of the same name?

6. What does Hughes write in the introduction before the poem "Sunday Morning Prophecy" begins?

7. What are the Lincoln Prairies symbolic of in "One"?

8. Why do some African-Americans have a complicated relationship with Christianity, at least as is represented in "Selected Poems of Langston Hughes"?

9. What does the poem "Drum" portray Death's eventuality as?

10. What advice does the gypsy give the speaker in "Bad Luck Card"?

(see the answer keys)

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