Picky Poetry Trivia Quiz

Answer: Arthur Hugh Clough

Clough (prounounced "cluff") was a poet ahead of his time. An interesting note: his wife's cousin was Florence Nightengale, and he spent much of his time helping Nightengale with hospital reforms.
Edward Lear is famous for his "nonsense poetry" and limericks.
Rossetti is known for his lyric/narrative poetry and died one year before Clough.
Meredith is probably most famous for his poem "Modern Love".

Answer: Lord Byron

Based on the legendary character Don Juan, this poem is written in ottava rima, an eight-line iambic pentameter stanza with the rhyme scheme ab ab ab cc. The final two lines are frequently used as a punch line or for some comic purpose. Byron also creates comic effects with his use of forced rhymes and rhymes of two or three syllables ("intellectual" . . . "henpeckedy you all").

Answer: Robert Browning

Yes, Browning penned these words. They are from the poem "Women and Roses" which consists of 8 stanzas. The odd stanzas are 3 lines long respectively and consist of an aaa rhyme sceme. The even stanzas are 9 lines long, lines 1-8 conisisting of aabbccdd rhyme with the last line going "They circle their rose on my rose tree".
Interestingly, Browning was sometimes called "Mrs. Browning's Husband" because Elizabeth Barrett (today relatively unknown)was much more famous than her husband in her own time.

Answer: Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 and died in 1918, as a result of World War I. He was a promising poet, matured rapidly by the war. His poems have a bitter, mournful air that reflects oh his philosophy: the waste of war and confusion as to why humans kill one another.

"What passing-bells for these who die as cattle
Only the monstrous anger of the guns
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
can pater out their hastion orisons..."

Answer: True

This amusing poem is by Robert Graves, most famous for his books "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the God". His style is distinct and interesting, and the poem mentioned in the query is an amusing one, including such lines as, "Lest men suspect your tale to be untrue, Keep probability--some say--in view"
and
"To forge a picture that will pass for true, do conscientiously what liars do--born liars, not the lesser sort that raid the mouths of others for their stock-in trade..."

Answer: 999

From Nabakov's brilliant and hilarious work "Pale Fire", the book is told through footnotes to the poem, written by one John Shade. The footnotes are written by Shade's "closest friend" and the book's twists and turns will leave the literary rolling in the proverbial aisles.

Answer: Royal Museum of Fine Art, Brussels

The poem is talking about Brussels museum which contains Brueghel's "Icarus". Ironically, the poem is not really about art, but more about the pain and misery of people who are dying or suffering (i.e. Icarus and his Father).

Answer: Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night"

It is definitely a reference to "Twelfth Night", more specifically Orsino's Speech: "That strain again! It had a dying fall."
The reference to Dante is at the beginning, with the quotation made to set off the title and give contrast to the "love song" part of the title.
The reference to Hamlet is late-ish in the poem with, "I shoult have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas". This refers to Hamlet II, 205-206 "...foryou yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if, like a crab, you should go backwards".
And the reference to Hesiod is, "And time for all the works and days of hands". Eliot is contrasting useful labor and futile social gestures.

Answer: Tristan Und Isolde

The Lines are :
"Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind
Wo weilest du?"

Which means, "Fresh blows the wind to the homeland; my Irish child, where are you waiting". In the opera, it is sung by a sailor recalling the girl he has left behind.

Answer: Holy Willie's Prayer

"Holy Willie's Prayer" by Robert Burns, is a satyrical poem inspired by a self-righteous elder in the parish of Mauchline, and is against Calvanist tenets. The title character assumes he is one of God's "elect", and will get into heaven no matter what he does.
"The Waste Land" was written about two hundred years or more after Burns' poem.
"Prometheus Unbound" is a poem/play by Percy Bysshe Shelley
"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" is one by William Blake, author of "Tyger, Tyger".