Poetry Trivia Questions
In case you missed them, here are the past five Columbia Granger's World of Poetry trivia questions of the day.
December 2
Question:
Whose obsession with wombats was the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's dormouse in Alice in Wonderland ?
Answer
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was, for a while, obsessed with wombats. After visiting them regularly at the zoo, he eventually acquired two of his own. He even allowed one to sleep on his table's centerpice.
December 1
Question:
The son of what two poets was nicknamed "Pen"?
Answer
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning's marriage (after a two year epistolary romance) resulted in a son who was aptly named Robert "Pen" Browning.
November 30
Question:
Who failed his baccalaureate exam three times, but led the way in popularizing vers libre (free verse) through his poetry?
Answer
Though also found in the Bible and in Walt Whitman's poems, many Modernists held up Jules Laforgue as the model practitioner of free verse.
November 29
Question:
Which poet's sister (who was also a poet) killed their mother by stabbing her with a table knife?
Answer
Both Charles Lamb and his sister Mary struggled with bouts of mental illness. Mary stabbed and killed their mother in 1796. Charles had her released into his care so that she would not have to spend her life imprisoned.
November 28
Question:
E. E. cummings's The Enormous Room , a novel about being a prisoner of war in World War I, frequently alludes to which allegorical book?
Answer
John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress , which was written while the author was imprisoned for preaching without a license.
