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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. How many poems are in the collection "O Ye Tongues"?

2. What does the building represent in "Riding the Elevator Into the Sky"?

3. What kind of poems are the collection "O Ye Tongues"?

4. "The Hex" describes the connection between the speaker's inability to appreciate happiness and her relationship to who?

5. What is the title of the poem "Rats Live On No Evil Star" based on?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does "Mary's Song" say about Sexton?

2. Why might Sexton's poem "Sleeping Beauty (Briar Rose)" have special significance for her?

3. Explain Sexton's retelling of the Biblical story of Jonah and the whale in "Making a Living".

4. Where does Sexton search for God in The Awful Rowing Toward God? Does she find him?

5. What is the source material for "The Jesus Papers?" How does Sexton use this source material?

6. Why does Sexton end The Awful Rowing Toward God with the poem "The Rowing Endeth"?

7. Other than showing Sexton's emotional and mental instability, how is The Death Notebooks different in the arc of her work? Give at least two examples.

8. How does Sexton deal with feminism in Transformations?

9. Why does The Awful Rowing Toward God begin with the poem "Rowing"?

10. How does Sexton view her poetry in relation to her faith?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Explain how The Awful Rowing Toward God can be considered Sexton's suicide note.

Essay Topic 2

Explain how Sexton weaves her personal and poetic lives together. Explain how they are set against each other.

Essay Topic 3

How do the poems in Posthumously Published Work fit into the larger scope of Sexton's poems? How do they stand out?

(see the answer keys)

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