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 6
Question:
What San Francisco poet and publisher echoed Ralph Waldo Emerson's letter to Whitman when he wrote to Allen Ginsberg asking to publish "Howl"?
Answer
Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Ferlinghetti wrote, "I greet you at the beginning of a great career. When do I get the manuscript?" Emerson had written to Whitman, "I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which must yet have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start."
August 5
Question:
What jazz saxophonist's free-form bop style of playing was a major inspiration for the free-form writing of the Beat poets?
Answer
Charlie Parker. Jack Kerouac considered him "as important as Beethoven."
August 4
Question:
What San Francisco poet claimed an extended series of his poems were written by a Japanese courtesan?
Answer
Kenneth Rexroth. The poems are published under the title The Love Songs of Marichiko. This literary hoax was well-received at the time.
August 3
Question:
What epic-sized poem by James Merrill takes its structure from a Ouija board?
Answer
"The Changing Light at Sandover." The poem has three parts: "Mirabell: Books of Number" is divided in to sections numbered 0 to 9; "The Book of Ephraim" has a section for each letter of the alphabet; and "Scripts for the Pageant" is divided into 3 large sections "Yes," "&," "No."
August 2
Question:
What poetry book, named after a painting by the Italian mannerist painter Francesco Parmigianino, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and The National Book Critics Circle Award?
Answer
John Ashbery's Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror .
