Poetry Trivia Questions

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

  • May 11

    Question:

    What classic of Middle English literature had only appeared in expurgated editions (the lurid content was removed) in the United States until 1929?

    Answer ->

    The Canterbury Tales.

  • May 10

    Question:

    How was it that Caedmon, the Anglo-Saxon author of one of the only extant pieces of Old English poetry, became a poet?

    Answer ->

    According to the Venerable Bede, Caedmon was an illiterate laborer who would flee banquets when the revelers would pass around a harp and sing. One time, having fled to the barn, he received in a dream the gift of poetry. However, this gift could only be used towards devotional poetry. As a result we have his hymns, but none of the wild lyrics sung by his co-revelers.

  • May 9

    Question:

    What American poet was described by James Russell Lowell as being "three fifths genius, two fifths fudge"?

    Answer ->

    Edgar Allan Poe.

  • May 8

    Question:

    What literary magazine was originally founded as a transcendentalist publication under the editorship of Ralph Waldo Emerson and was later revived as a modernist literary forum, the first magazine in America to publish "The Waste Land"?

    Answer ->

    The Dial .

  • May 7

    Question:

    What American poet spent twelve years in St. Elizabeths Hospital, a federally-run psychiatric hospital?

    Answer ->

    Ezra Pound.

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