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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. What does the trumpet player have beneath his eyes in "Trumpet Player"?

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

3. What is the sign that the speaker of "Bad Morning" is indeed having a bad morning?

4. What time does the speaker mention going down to the river in "Reverie on the Harlem River"?

5. How does the speaker describe the trumpet player's music in "Trumpet Player"?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the speaker describe a dream in "Beale Street"?

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

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

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

5. Why does the preacher in "Sunday Morning Prophecy" want congregants to give freely into the collection basket?

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

7. What kind of imagery is most prevalent in the poems in the section "Sea and Land"?

8. What is the unspoken implication about Monroe in "Monroe's Blues"?

9. What is a Black Maria?

10. What is the musician singing about in "The Weary Blues"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Analyze Sylvester in "Sylvester's Death Bed" and discuss 1) the role(s) women play in the poem, 2) Sylvester's attitude about the women surrounding him, and 3) the meaning behind why Sylvester dies right before he is able to "hug 'em."

Essay Topic 2

Discuss at least 3 ways a poem of your choosing might be different if Langston Hughes were writing today instead of during the Harlem Renaissance. Use specific examples from the poem(s) when discussing potential differences.

Essay Topic 3

Discuss 3 rhetorical devices Hughes uses to transform the historical person Billie Holiday to the literary person in the poem of the same name.

(see the answer keys)

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