Night Sky with Exit Wounds Quizzes

Night Sky with Exit Wounds Quiz 1

1 What is the speaker literally doing in the beginning of the poem "Threshold?"
Kneeling in prayer

Kneeling to tend to a garden

Kneeling and watching his father shower through a keyhole

Kneeling to perform a sex act
2 What detail early on in "Threshold" does NOT foreground the speaker's fascination with the body?
The speaker's description of himself as a "beggar"

The speaker's claim that his father's voice "filled [him] to the core / like a skeleton"

His note that he was watching "the rain / falling through [his father]" rather than anything else

The fact that the poem begins with "In the body"
3 Which recurring image is introduced in "Threshold" to describe the speaker's father?
The image of the knife

The image of fire

The image of guitar strings

The image of the colt
4 Which formal detail in "Threshold" most suggests that the speaker has fully "enter[ed] a song" by the poem's end?
The anadiplosis of "So I lost. / I lost it all with my eyes"

The fact that the speaker's eyes are "wide open"

The move from couplets, which suggest equivocation, to a singleton line at the end

The repetition of the "So I" construction at the poem's close
5 What effect is created for the collection as a whole by separating "Threshold" from the other poems?
It turns "Threshold" into an introduction, which is important for the way the poem focuses on the speaker's sex life.

It is done primarily without intention and is mostly coincidental.

It frames "Threshold" as a kind of threshold in itself, separating readers' own lives from the deep dive they are about to undertake into the speaker's inner meditations.

It frames "Threshold" as the most important poem in the collection.
6 Which formal element in "Telemachus" emphasizes the transformation of the place the speaker and his father left behind?
The speaker's focus on trying to be a good son

The enjambments after "city" and "bombed," which formally separate the places as they were from the places as they are now

The fact that the sand is "white" and not the color of local sands in the speaker's home

The erasure of the trail left by the father's knuckles in the sand
7 Which of the following is NOT a feature of "Telemachus" that emphasizes the speaker's estrangement from his father?
The father's stillness, which makes the speaker think "he could be anyone's father"

That the speaker's father has been shot

The speaker's comparison of the father to "a green bottle"

That the speaker's question of "Do you know who I am / Ba?" receives no answer
8 Which of the following is NOT a way that the speaker tries to connect with his father at the end of "Telemachus"?
He recognizes that he will figuratively wear his father's face to kiss his lover goodnight.

He takes on his father's pain of drowning and sets to work on it.

He kisses his father on the lips.

He gives his father a tight hug.
9 Which of the following is most likely the figurative implication of the "faithful work of drowning"?
The inheritance of generational trauma from his father, possibly related to war or the immigrant experience

The speaker's desperate desire to connect with his father

The idea that dying is a holy exercise, despite its pain

The framing of the speaker's father as a role model
10 Which of the following is NOT a motif that appears in "Aubade with Burning City" in the stanza that begins "His fingers running the hem"?
The idea that, even against backdrops of violence, tenderness and love crop up

The idea that unity between two people can be achieved through the body

The fact of sexual violence

The idea of the body as susceptible to ignition or intense, destructive passion
11 Which of the following is NOT a device used by Vuong in "Aubade with Burning City" to emphasize the ruination occurring in the scene?
The alliteration in phrases like "snow scraping" and "snow shredded"

The image of the sprig of magnolia expanding

The intense formal variation that give the impression of disarray

The contrast between the destruction and the lyrics of "White Christmas"
12 Which of the following is not a moment in "Aubade with Burning City" where the form mirrors the content?
The enjambment separating "curtain of snow" from "falling from her shoulders"

The white space that intrudes between "A helicopter lifting the living just" and "out of reach"

The enjambment between "facedown in a pool of Coca-Cola" and "A palm-sized photo"

The white space that is created in the enjambments and indentation around "The city so white it is ready for ink"
13 What is the irony of the use of the song "White Christmas" to signal American evacuation from Saigon?
The song had earlier been used a signal to evacuate beaches in WWII.

The song was penned by an American author in Vietnam.

Saigon is a city that almost never receives snowfall, least of all in April.

The song was penned by a Vietnamese author in America.
14 Which of the following is NOT a means by which Vuong connects the lovers to the scene of destruction in "Aubade with Burning City"?
The male lover's explicit comment that his "brothers have won the war"

That the male lover is the traffic guard who "unstraps his holster"

The repetition of "milkflower petals" to evoke both the girl's dress and the petals on the dog in the street

The use of the "Open, he says" construction to refer to both the lovers and the burning nun
15 What does the sudden intrusion of god at the end of "Aubade with Burning City" suggest?
God is totally indifferent to the scene but stops by out of chance.

Even against the backdrops of violence and pain, there is still room for man's interaction with the divine, however desolate.

God wishes to have the nun sexually.

God has sanctioned the violence occurring in Vietnam.
16 Who are the lovers addressed in "A Little Closer to the Edge"?
The speaker and a woman he loves

Adam and Eve

The speaker's mother and father

The two lovers from "Aubade with Burning City"
17 What does the line about the man's "faux Rolex" tell us in "A Little Closer to the Edge"?
The speaker's father is a man of means.

The speaker's father will ultimately abuse his mother.

The speaker's father is gifting the watch to the mother.

The speaker's father works in counterfeiting.
18 In "A Little Closer to the Edge," what does the line beginning "In this verison" allude to?
The story of the Binding of Isaac

The story of the Garden of Eden

The story of Buddha's enlightenment

The story of the farmer and the snake
19 Which formal detail does NOT mimic the sexual activity between the speaker's parents in "A Little Closer to the Edge"?
The abruptness of the em dash after "press / into her"

The fact that the poet is written in unbroken couplets

The "black teeth" at the beginning of the poem

The repeated use of apostrophe to simulate moans of pleasure ("O")
20 In "A Little Closer to the Edge," which two motifs meet at the poem's end?
The recurring image of the horse and the motif of the color red

The motif of the Bible and the recurring image of the horse

The motif of the seasons and the recurring image of the horse

The motif of the Bible and the motif of the seasons
21 Which of the following is NOT a Biblical image in "A Little Closer to the Edge"?
The making of "home / out of hip bones"

The presence of the hand/clock hand duality

The presence of the snake

The presence of apples at the poem's close
22 Which country did Ocean Vuong's family live in while waiting to immigrate to the United States?
China

Australia

The Philippines

New Zealand
23 In which city did Ocean Vuong's family ultimately settle?
Providence, Rhode Island

New York, New York

Boston, Massachusetts

Hartford, Connecticut
24 How did Ocean Vuong get his name?
His father suggested it on their journey to the United States.

He chose the name for himself.

His grandmother loved sitting by the ocean as a girl.

His mother was moved by the definition of the word after learning it from a client.
25 Which religion is Ocean Vuong a practitioner of?
Judaism

Protestant Christianity

Catholicism

Zen Buddhism

Study Guide for Night Sky with Exit Wounds

Night Sky with Exit Wounds study guide contains a biography of Ocean Vuong, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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Night Sky with Exit Wounds

by Ocean Vuong

Night Sky with Exit Wounds Quiz 1

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