Name That Poet Trivia Quiz

Answer: John Milton

John Milton (1608-1674) published the first version of 'Paradise Lost' in 1667; a second edition in 1674 reorganised 10,000-plus lines of the poem from the original ten books into twelve. The poem is a re-imagining of events from the Bible, with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden the culminating event.

These lines are part of the speech made by Lucifer following his expulsion from Heaven after rebelling against God. He has been exiled to Hell (and will come to be known as Satan), where he gathers his followers and stages a return to the newly-created earth to do his best to disrupt God's plans.

Answer: Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) was a metaphysical poet who is perhaps now best known for the poem from which these lines were taken, 'To His Coy Mistress'. It is often cited as a prime example of a 'carpe diem' (seize the day) poem, as the narrator urges his lover to respond to his advances. He starts by saying how long he could spend admiring each of her features, if only he had sufficient time:
'Had we but World enough, and Time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.

The second stanza, however, recalls the shortness of life:
'But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near:'

And the third stanza, which follows the lines used in the question, goes on to declare that all things considered, they had best be getting on with a romantic liaison before it is too late.

Answer: William Blake

William Blake (1757-1827) was a Romantic poet and artist who gained little recognition during his life, but who is now widely respected. His work was often self-illustrated using engraved plates, with the poems hand-written. The collection 'Songs of Innocence and of Experience', which was published in 1794 after being originally published in two separate parts, includes some of his most familiar poems. 'The Lamb' is one of the 'Songs of Innocence', extolling the goodness of the creator of such a lovely animal. 'The Tyger', from which the lines used for this question come, takes a more nuanced approach to the relationship between God and creation:

'When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?'

Answer: Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was one of the major British Romantic poets - and if he hadn't drowned at the age of 30, he could have produced so much more! This quote comes from the 1818 poem 'Ozymandias', a commentary on the futility of worldly success. The words were inscribed on the pedestal of a statue which has been reduced by the ravages of time to two legs and a head which lies half-buried in the sand nearby.

'Ozymandias' was written as one of a series of friendly challenges between members of his friendship group. He and Horace Smith undertook to use a passage from the Greek historian Diodorus as their inspiration, with Shelley's effort being published a few weeks ahead of Smith's sonnet. Ozymandias was the name the Greeks used to refer to Ramses II, an Egyptian pharaoh also known as Ramses the Great, and recognised as one of the most powerful and successful leaders of his people. I wish my high school English teacher had told us this, so that we could have related the poem to our concurrent study of ancient Egypt!

Answer: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was one of the group known as the New England fireside poets. These were the first American poets to rival the British in popularity and public esteem. Their nickname was derived from the domestic and moral import of their subject matter, and inspired originally by the title of Longfellow's 1850 book of poems, 'The Seaside and the Fireside'. The lines in the question come from 'The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls', first published in the 1880 collection, 'Ultima Thule'. While students are more likely to have encountered (and quite possibly have been forced to memorize and recite) 'Paul Revere's Ride' or 'The Song of Hiawatha', this poem is a lovely example of the fireside feel, with its reflection on the transitory nature of life in the middle of an enduring world.

'The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.'

Answer: Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is best known for his Gothic stories and poems, as well as for being one of the earliest writers in the genre of detective fiction. 'Quoth the raven, "Nevermore"' is a line that has become so widely referenced in a range of media that it is virtually a cliche. 'To Helen' is not as instantly familiar as 'The Raven', but it does contain the memorable line used in this question. Actually, the first version of the poem, published in 1831, was worded slightly differently: 'the beauty of fair Greece, and the grandeur of old Rome' became 'the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome' in the 1945 version printed in 'The Raven and Other Poems'.

As the title suggests, the subject of the poem (the mother of a childhood friend) is being compared to Helen of Troy, the woman whose beauty is reputed to have started the Trojan War. Despite containing two lines that stick in the reader's memory as encapsulating something, it is not actually clear what! The entire poem contains elliptical references to classical works, as well as to the writing of poets Poe admired, such as Byron and Coleridge. There is plenty of room for speculation as to exactly what he meant - and some critics feel that this makes it a pretty rubbish bit of writing, while others contend that the lack of clarity is intentional, and an invitation from Poe for us to explore the complexities of his suggestions.

Answer: Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson FRS (1809-1892) was the English Poet Laureate from 1850 (succeeding William Wordsworth in the post) until his death, making him one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. While in that position, he wrote 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', which included the well-known lines 'Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die', published under his initials rather than his full name as it was considered controversial in its suggestion that Britain's military leaders may have been less than perfect in the Battle of Balaclava.

The line in the question (one which Agatha Christie used as the title of a murder mystery in 1962 - read it to discover the relevance) comes from 'The Lady of Shalott', a poem set in the Arthurian tradition that recounts the doomed love of Elaine of Astolat for Lancelot. She is confined to a tower for reasons left unexplained, and must watch the world from its seclusion. When Lancelot rides by, she is entranced, and utters these words, before setting out to follow him to Camelot, dying on the way. The first version of the poem was published in 1832 in a book called 'Poems'; the second one, in 1842, was also published in a book called 'Poems'. For a man of words, he certainly didn't waste any energy on the titles of his collections!

Answer: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) is probably better known for his essays than his poems, but he was one of leaders of the Transcendentalist movement, and his poems were highly influential.

The poem now generally referred to as the 'Concord Hymn' was originally titled 'Hymn: Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836'. At the title says, it was written to be part of the dedication of an obelisk commemorating the battles of Lexington and Concord that signalled the start of the American Revolution in 1775. Emerson had been living with his grandfather in a house located a few hundred yards away from the site of the Concord battle, and was pleased to provide the poem for the event. It was first read, then sung to a tune called 'Old Hundredth' which you have almost certainly heard somewhere along the line: 'All People that on Earth do Dwell' and the 'Common Doxology' (which starts 'Praise God from whom all blessings flow') are both sung to that tune.

The first verse goes:
'By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.'

Answer: Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832 - 1898), who is best known for the two novels 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' (1865) and 'Through the Looking-Glass' (1871). He was a talented mathematician, and was awarded the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship in 1855, a position he held for over 20 years. He created a word game called a doublet that Fun Trivia members will recognise as a familiar type of Brain Teaser, with a word being changed one letter at a time to form a new one until a sequence is complete. Change a dog into a cat: DOG, COG, COT, CAT.

And then there were the nonsense poems, some of which were included in the 'Alice' books, including 'Jabberwocky', whose opening lines were used for this question. The first verse reads:
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.'

In the introduction to his later work 'The Hunting of the Snark', Carroll settled the controversy about how to pronounce some of his word inventions: 'The 'i' in 'slithy' is long, as in 'writhe', and 'toves' is pronounced so as to rhyme with 'groves'.' So at least we know how to say the words, if not to understand them!

Answer: W.B. Yeats

The Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) wrote a number of poems whose lines have become part of the lexicon, many of them firmly based in his striving for Irish independence and recognition of its traditional culture. 'He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven' was published in the 1899 volume of poems, 'The Wind Among the Reeds'. The narrator is a figure (who appears in a number of Yeats' poems) with the Gaelic name Aedh, meaning fire. As Yeats portrays this character, Aedh is a lovelorn figure, at the mercy of the object of his affections.

'Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.'

Answer: Robert Frost

Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963) was a childhood favorite of mine because we shared a birthday (albeit nearly 80 years apart) and because his poems resonated with the New England countryside where I grew up. He received four Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry: in 1924 for 'New Hampshire: A Poem With Notes and Grace Notes', 1931 for 'Collected Poems', 1937 for 'A Further Range' and 1943 for 'A Witness Tree'. The first of these included three poems that have become familiar not only for themselves, but also through a number of cultural references.

'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening', commonly included in school anthologies, was written when Frost had finished 'New Hampshire', and realised it was nearly dawn. Inspired by the sunrise, he wrote this little gem in a matter of minutes! The final lines ('The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep') have been used in countless eulogies, and as an inspirational mantra in numerous places.

'Nothing Gold Can Stay' is recited by the main character of S.E. Hinton's 'The Outsiders' as Ponyboy and Johnny view the sunrise. Later, Johnny sends Pony a deathbed letter urging him to "stay gold".

'Fire and Ice', quoted in the question, is the inspiration for George R. R. Martin's fantasy series 'A Song of Ice and Fire'. It was itself inspired both by Dante's 'Inferno' (where the lowest circle of Hell, where the worst sinners are confined, is a frozen lake) and a conversation Frost had with an astronomer who told him the end of the world might occur if the sun exploded and engulfed out planet, or it might just be a long slow process of the sun getting steadily colder.

'Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.'

Answer: T.S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (1888-1965) was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry" - but his work was not always that well received. When 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' was published in 1915, it was considered quite controversial in its failure to accept poetic conventions. Stream of consciousness was a technique making its first tentative appearance in the literary world, and it didn't make sense for a lot of people. But Modernism was on its way.

Eliot's later works include 'The Waste Land' (1922), 'The Hollow Men' (1925), 'Four Quartets' (published separately between 1936 and 1942) and 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats' (1939), which was to be the basis for the long-running musical 'Cats'. The final lines of 'The Hollow Men' are among Eliot's most-quoted: 'This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.'

Answer: Wilfred Owen

Most of the work of Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (1893-1918) was published posthumously, following his death in action one week before the end of World War I. His war poems have none of the glorification of war and the nobility of our cause that had been widely seen in other war poets. Rather, they reflected his horrendous experiences in the trenches. Titles such as 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' make this clear. 'Dulce et Decorum est', used for this question, is less clear from the title, which comes from an ode by the Latin poet Horace.

The Latin line Owen quotes at the end of his poem (condemning it as a lie) translates into English as 'It is sweet and appropriate to die for one's country.' The description of undergoing a gas attack on the front line, based on personal experience, is horrifying. Several drafts of this poem were written while Owen was being treated for shell shock in an Edinburgh hospital (where he met and was mentored by Siegfried Sassoon) before being sent back to the front.

Answer: Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg 1926-1997) was one of the leading members of the group known as the Beat Generation of poets, along with William S. Boroughs and Jack Kerouac. These three met while students at Columbia University during the 1940s, and started meeting with like-minded artists in New York City before most of the members of the group moved to San Francisco in the mid-50s. There the beatniks evolved into the hippie movement of the 1960s.

The three best known examples of Beat literature are probably Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' (a poem published in 1956), William S. Burroughs' 'Naked Lunch' (a 1959 novel structured as a series of vignettes that can be read in any order), and Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' (a novel describing a journey across America, published in 1957).

The opening line of 'Howl', used in the question, illustrates Ginsberg's approach to poetry - it appears to be designed to be read aloud, with the lines as long as one's breath can hold out while the words tumble into place. But Ginsberg insisted it was a poem, not a performance piece. The poem graphically describes the ways in which society had destroyed the lives of many of his friends - and the explicit descriptions of sex and drugs led to an obscenity trial in which publisher Lawrence Ferlenghetti was acquitted due to the poem being held to have significant redeeming social importance.

Answer: Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was known for writing in the genre of confessional poetry. She is best known 'The Colossus and Other Poems' (1960) and 'Ariel' (1965); these poems were collected with additional unpublished works in 'The Collected Poems' (1981), which was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Plath spent most of her adult life struggling with depression, and had a tumultuous marriage with British poet (later Poet Laureate) Ted Hughes that lasted for six years. Six months after their separation, she died in what was ruled suicide, but was felt by some friends to be an accident resulting from an adverse reaction to recently-prescribed antidepressants.

The lines in the question come from an early sonnet called 'To Time'. This poem is thought to have been written for an English class while she was a student at Smith College, and was first published in the section of 'The Collected Poems' dedicated to her youngest writing. It is a fairly pessimistic statement about the nature of life.

'Today we move in jade and cease with garnet
amid the clicking jewelled clocks that mark
our years. Death comes in a casual steel car, yet
we vaunt our days in neon, and scorn the dark.

But outside the diabolic steel of this
most plastic-windowed city, I can hear
the lone wind raving in the gutter, his
voice crying exclusion in my ear.

So cry for the pagan girl left picking olives
beside a sun-blue sea, and mourn the flagon
raised to toast a thousand kings, for all gives
sorrow: weep for the legendary dragon.

Time is a great machine of iron bars
that drains eternally the milk of stars.'