The Poetry of Robert Frost Trivia Quiz

Answer: free verse

Most of Robert Frost's poetry uses short and simple metrical forms employing iambic pentameter, including couplets (two rhymed, metrical lines), quatrains (metrical, four-line stanzas that often rhyme), and sonnets (metrical, 14-line poems). He also writes some poems in blank verse (unrhymed, metrical poetry), such as "Mending Wall". Free verse is poetry without rhyme or meter, and Robert Frost was not a fan of such formless poetry.

He once said, "Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down."

Answer: wall

This is the opening line of "Mending Wall", which continues:

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast."

The poem uses the refrain "good fences make good neighbors" but questions whether walls close off friendship among neighbors:

"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense."

"Mending Wall" was the first of the poems in Frost's "North of Boston" collection, which was published in 1914.

Answer: Most of it is set in urban environments

Robert Frost's poetry often explores man's feelings and place in the universe, reflecting on themes such as isolation, duty, separation from God, the barriers between man and man, and the barriers between man and the universe. His poems are usually set in rural New England and often feature animals, woods, plants, creeks, and nature. Scenes of everyday life also populate his work, such as mending a wall, mowing hay, and traveling to the village and pausing to watch the snow.

Answer: birches

These are the opening lines of "Birches", which was first published in the "Atlantic Monthly" and later included in Robert Frost's 1916 collection "Mountain Interval". The 59-line poem concludes:

"I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."

Answer: The New York Independent

The Independent was a weekly newspaper published in New York City from 1848 to 1928. The paper published Frost's poem "My Butterfly. An Elegy" in its November 8, 1894 edition. In 2020, that $15 would amount to over $450, a goodly sum for a single poem. Frost went on to become and American institution.

He received the Congressional Gold Medal for his work in 1960 and became poet laureate of Vermont in 1961. Most notably, he received four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.

Answer: Fire and Ice

"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."

This poem was originally published in "Harper's Magazine" and then included in Frost's 1923 collection "New Hampshire".

Answer: A Boy's Will

"In the Seven Woods" is a collection of poetry by W.B. Yeats published in 1901. "The Cod Head" and "Journey to Love" are both by William Carlos Williams. Frost's first complete collection of poetry, "A Boy's Will", was published in England in 1913. His second collection, "North of Boston", was published just a year later.

Answer: It was grassy and wanted wear.

"Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;"

It's the first path (not the other) that "bent in the undergrowth." Both paths were covered in leaves (not blossoms):

"And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black."

"The Road Not Taken" was included in "Mountain Intervals".

Answer: The Raven

"The Raven" is a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. "The Road Not Taken" is one of Frost's most anthologized poems. "Out, Out" tells of an accident in which a buzz-saw severs a young man's hand, resulting in his death. "The Oven Bird" is a sonnet that depicts a bird singing and begins, "There is a singer everyone has heard, / Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird." All three of these Frost poems were included in his 1916 collection "Mountain Interval".

Answer: alliteration

Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds, as in "green" and "gold" and then "hardest" "hue" and "hold". The poem also ends with the repetition of the "d" sound:

"So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay."

"Nothing Gold Can Stay" was originally published in "The Yale Review" and then included in Frost's 1923 collection "New Hampshire".

Answer: queer

"My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year."

Queer in this context means strange or unusual. This poem was included in Frost's "New Hampshire" collection and is often included in school anthologies.

Answer: night

"Acquainted with the Night" was first published in the "Virginia Quarterly Review" and later included in Frost's poetry collection "West-Running Brook". The collection was published in 1928 and included woodcuts by the illustrator J.J. Lankes.

Answer: The Gift Outright

The poem continues:

"She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed."

Frost recited this poem at Kennedy's inauguration on January 20, 1961, but he had recited it years earlier at William & Mary College in Virginia in December of 1941. First published in the "Virginia Quarterly Review" in 1942, the poem was included in Frost's 1943 collection "A Witness Tree". Frost described the poem as "a history of the United States in a dozen lines of blank verse." (The poem is actually sixteen lines long.)

Frost had written as a preface to "The Gift Outright" a poem titled "For John F. Kennedy His Inauguration." He never got to read that poem at the inauguration, however. The poem was later included in his 1962 poetry collection "The Clearing".

Answer: birth

This simple quatrain, titled "A Question", was included in Frost's collection "A Witness Tree". The book in which it appeared consisted primarily of short verse and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1943. Frost had born a lot of "soul and body scars" himself in the years preceding the book's publication: his daughter Marjorie died in 1934 of puerperal fever, and his wife died in 1938. Two years later, his son Carol committed suicide.

Answer: jokes

This was included in the 1962 poetry collection "In the Clearing" in the "cluster of faith" poems. In addition to writing poetry, Robert Frost published four plays: "A Way Out", "The Cow's in the Corn", "A Masque of Reason", and "A Masque of Mercy". Over 25 collections of his poetry were published in his own lifetime, and he is perhaps the most anthologized poet in American history.