Poetry Trivia Questions
In case you missed them, here are the past five Columbia Granger's World of Poetry trivia questions of the day. .
August 21
Question:
The French poet Charles Cros is famous for almost inventing what device, only to be "beaten to the patent office" by Thomas Edison?
Answer
The phonograph. Cros submitted proposals to the French Academy of Sciences, but before he could create a working model, Edison had already perfected his version of the device.
August 20
Question:
What famous sonnet was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley as part of a competition with his friend Horace Smith over who could write a better poem in reaction to a news story about archeological discoveries in Egypt?
Answer
August 19
Question:
What English novelist would turn to poetry after his novels were criticized for their frank treatment of sexuality?
Answer
August 18
Question:
What Elizabethan poet described Petrarch's influence on verse writing as being like Procrustes' bed?
Answer
Because the sonnet had become so popular that poems that were too short for the form were stretched to fit it and those too long for it were cut short, Ben Jonson likened Petrarch's influence to Procrustes' infamously adjustable bed.
August 17
Question:
What poet described T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" as "piece of rhythmical grumbling"?
Answer
T.S. Eliot himself.
