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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 is the literary allusion in Poem 2?

2. In Poem 16, the poet writes, "Yet away around on the far side like the stage door of a circus tent is a wide wide vent in the _______."

3. Along with sleight-of-foot tricks, what does the poet perform in Poem 15?

4. What is the woman carrying in Poem 8?

5. In Poem 10, the poet writes that beauty never dies, but lies among the aborigines of what?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the Paradiso in Poem 13 of Chapter One?

2. Poem 3 of Chapter One describes other visions of America. What are they?

3. What events take place in Poem 18 of Chapter One? How does the poet describe "the dreamer"?

4. What does the poet write about Beauty in Poem 10 of Chapter One?

5. What happens in Poem 9 of Chapter One? What does the woman say to him in the poem? What is the mood?

6. Describe Poem 7 of Chapter One. What literally happens in the poem, and what is the underlying meaning?

7. How is life compared to a circus in Poem 17 of Chapter One?

8. Describe the Christ figure in Poem 5 of Chapter One.

9. Detail the events which take place in Poem 8, in Golden Gate Park.

10. Describe Goya's paintings as described by the author in Poem 1.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the theme of "materialism" in the poem "Christ Climbed Down." What is the author's point of view in this poem? What imagery is used to support this?

Essay Topic 2

Describe the animal imagery prominent in Poem 11 of Chapter One. In this poem, the author writes, "The wounded wilderness of Morris Graves / is not the same wild west / the white man found." How does he go one to describe it?

Essay Topic 3

Discuss the poems of Chapter 2 in comparison to the poems of the rest of the collection. How are these different in style? What are the common themes?

(see the answer keys)

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