Adrienne Rich’s Poetry and Prose Quizzes

Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose Quiz

By Rebecca van Laer · Edited by James Cooper · Last reviewed August 12, 2021

1 Which of the following is *not* an accurate description of Rich's career?

Her poetry evolved alongside her life experience

Beginning in the 1970s, her work was recognized for it feminist ideals

Her work featured increasingly progressive themes

She stuck to one style for all of her life
2 Which of the following did *not* influence Rich's career?

Her political activism

Her brother's untimely death

Her experiences as a wife and mother

Her identification as a lesbian
3 Which of Rich's volumes won the National Book Award?

Blood, Bread, and Poetry

A Change of World

Diving into the Wreck

Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law
4 Why did Rich decline to accept the National Book Award on her own?

To protest American politics

To share it with other female authors

She disapproved of the other winners

She was too sick to receive it in person
5 Acccording to Rich, what is necessary for political change?

Get-out-the-vote drives

Community and collective action

The end of the electoral college

The removal of dark money from politics
6 What does Rich argue in "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" ?

That the gay rights movement has become too inclusive

That lesbians are too visible

That everyone should be heterosexual

That heterosexuality is not necessarily most women's sexual preference
7 How can we interpet the title of "A Dream of a Common Language"?

Rich dreams that everyone begins to speak Esperanto

Rich dreams that everyone begins to speak English

Rich dreams that poetry might be able to connect and speak to everyone

It refers to a dream Rich had after her ex-husband's death
8 Which of the following is not one of Rich's themes?

The Oedipal complex

Power

LGBTQ+ rights

Feminism
9 How does Rich view received history?

The product of careful work by scholars and journalists

A conspiracy

A facutal record of the past

Inaccuate, leaving out much of the truth
10 What does Rich mean in the lines "Tonight I think no poetry will serve"?

Poetry cannot be bent to the poet's will

Poetry cannot accurately convey some emotions, like intense love

Rich experience a long period of writer's block

Poetry is not a servile art that represents the view of the ruling class
11 Why might Rich compare the contemporary world to a shipwreck in "Diving into the Wreck"?

She wants to emphasize that people are like ships passing in the night

There is pervasive inequality in 20th-century America

There's a lot we don't understand, so the world could be seen as "underwater"

She wants to compare contemporary politics to piracy and war
12 From what perspective do most of Rich's poem speak?

First person

Second person

Through dialogue

Third person
13 Which of the following is *not* a formal feature of Rich's poetry?

blank spaces

repeating lines, as in pantoums and villanelles

enjambment

free verse
14 Which of the following symbols does not appear in Rich's poetry?

Radium

Tigers

White rooms

The colossus
15 Why does Rich focus on Marie Curie's research into Radium?

She wishes to show the dangers of technological progress

Radium both gave Curie her power and killed her, reflecting on the nature of power

She wishes to shed light on this largely unrecognized female scientist

It is an anti-nuclearization poem
16 For Rich, what is the role of poetry?

To connect people and inspire them to political action

To record the poet's personal life

To confess and expunge ugly, self-hating thoughts

To record historical events
17 How can we intepret the tigers in "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers"?

They show the inherent violence of all men

They reveal women's ability to blend in with their surroundings

They are symbols for liberated women

They are a symbol of the fight against climate change
18 When did Adrienne Rich die?

2019

She is still alive

2012

1912
19 What does Rich mean when she says "No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness"?

Women must work harder to understand the history of Western thought

Women can only be insiders if they understand masculine consciousness

Institiutions were not built to include women, and still exclude them

Women are not fit to be included in departments that study the history of consciousness
20 Why is Rich skeptical of the development of technology?

She had an allergy to electricity

She fears the singularity

It cuts generations off from one another

She belives poetry should be written with pen and paper
21 Describe Rich's religious background

Both her parents were Christian

She was a Buddhist for all her life

She espouses atheism as the only logical system of thinking

She warn born to a Jewish father and a Christian mother
22 Which of the following prizes did Rich reject for political reasons?

The National Book Award

National Medal of Arts

The Pulitzer Prize

A Guggenheim Fellowship
23 Which of the following was not one of Rich's identities?

Culturally Jewish

Lesbian

Feminist

Person of Color
24 With whom does the poet identify in "Diving into the Wreck?"

A mermaid and merman

Her mother

Jacques Costeau

Marie Curie
25 What is the purposes of the blank spaces in Rich's lines of poetry?

To mimic the holes in a corset

To create the effect of a stutter

To pay homage to Emily Dickinson's dashes

To provide the reader room to reflect or to emphasize a gap in meaning

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