Poetry Trivia Questions

In case you missed them, here are the past five Columbia Granger's World of Poetry trivia questions of the day. .

  • June 13

    Question:

    What British Poet coined the now often referenced phrase "The White Man's Burden" as part of a justification for Imperialism?

    Answer ->

    Rudyard Kipling

  • June 12

    Question:

    Two poets of the British Isles are referred to simply as "The Bard." One is English, one is Scottish. Who are they?

    Answer ->

    William Shakespeare and Robert Burns are from England and Scotland respectively.

  • June 11

    Question:

    What late 19th-century poetic movement was disparaged in Macmillan's Magazine as representing "a sick indifference to the things of our own time, and a spurious devotion to whatever is foreign, exotic, archaic or grotesque"?

    Answer ->

    The Pre-Raphaelites. Painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti was one of the co-founders.

  • June 10

    Question:

    What late 19th-century British poet declared, "I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman's mind to be more like my own than any other man's living"?

    Answer ->

    Gerard Manly Hopkins. Hopkins was a Jesuit priest, and he added, "As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession."

  • June 9

    Question:

    What Victorian epistolary poem was compared by its contemporaries to Hamlet because of its obsession with inaction and contemplation?

    Answer ->

    "Amours de Voyage" by Arthur Hugh Clough

Columbia University Press