Poetry Trivia Questions

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

  • October 14

    Question:

    Who is credited with first popularizing the literary device known as a blason?

    Answer ->

    Clément Marot is credited as the source of this literary tradition. Shakespeare provides an ironic interpretation of this established device in his sonnet starting "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun."

  • October 13

    Question:

    Who, at the start of the Second World War, took a 26 year hiatus from poetry and focused on his career as a social worker?

    Answer ->

    Carl Rakosi, one of the original Objectivists, stopped writing and reading poetry from 1941 to 1967.

  • October 12

    Question:

    Which poem contains the advice "carpe diem quam minimum credula postero"?

    Answer ->

    Roughly translated as "seize the day, for the future believe the minimum," this bit of wisdom appears in Horace's "Ode 1" of Book 1 . The theme is taken up by the poets Robert Herrick, Andrew Marvell and  Alfred Tennyson to name a few.

  • October 11

    Question:

    According to Plato, who was the "tenth muse"?

    Answer ->

    In an epigram ascribed to Plato in the Greek Anthology, Sappho is called the tenth muse.

  • October 10

    Question:

    What poet's death inspired the formation of a new religious order?

    Answer ->

    The Whirling Dervishes, a Sufi order, formed after the death of Jelaluddin Rumi.

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