Poetry Trivia Questions

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

  • April 6

    Question:

    What magazine drew the ire of a young Lord Byron, provoking him to write the poem which would make him famous?

    Answer ->

    The Edinburgh Review . A sharp review of Byron's first book Hours of Idleness provoked the poet to write the satirical "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers."

  • April 5

    Question:

    What poet said of Jesus Christ, "He is the only God . . . And so am I and so are you"?

    Answer ->

    William Blake.

  • April 4

    Question:

    What situation provoked William Blake to compare himself to Adam and his wife to Eve?

    Answer ->

    A friend stumbled upon Blake and his wife, Catherine, while they were in their Lambeth garden reciting John Milton's Paradise Lost , naked.  "Come in!" Blake cried. "It's only Adam and Eve, you know!"

  • April 3

    Question:

    Which two poets can be considered to have begun the English tradition of "the poetry of nature," championed by William Wordsworth in the famous "Preface affixed to Lyrical Ballads"?

    Answer ->

    Thomas Gray and William Cowper.

  • April 2

    Question:

    Who was honored in both John Keats' "Endymion" and Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Adonais" (which also memorializes Keats)?

    Answer ->

    Thomas Chatterton. Chatterton attributed his "medieval" poems to "Thomas Rowley." The attribution was taken seriously for a brief time. Though highly prolific and about to embark upon what could have been a meteoric literary career, Chatterton committed suicide at the age of 17.

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