Write Me a Poem, Baby Trivia Quiz

Answer: Don't Get Perconel With a Chicken

H. Allen Smith was a prolific writer. Much of his work dealt with his travels and personal experiences. He was of the opinion that children are some of the best writers; what they lack in technical skill, they make up for in originality and imagination. The title of "Don't Get Perconel With a Chicken" is taken from an essay by a young girl who was sent to spend the summer on her grandparents' farm. One of her chores was feeding the chickens. She gave them all names, and made pets of them. One day her grandfather decided that her favorite chicken, a rooster, would become Sunday dinner. Although she admitted to eating a drumstick, she concluded her essay with a solemn warning that if you are sent to spend the summer on a farm, "don't get perconel with a chicken."

Although most of H. Allen Smith's books have been out of print for many years, they remain some of the funniest things I have ever read. He is also the author of a book called "How to Write Without Knowing Nothing."

Answer: Egypt

"The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor" has been dated to about 2000 BC. It is much older than the Sumerian epic "Gilgamesh." It is about a sailor who is cast up on an island after his ship sinks. He meets a god in the form of a serpent who gives him many gifts, and promises him he will be saved.

He eventually returns to Egypt and presents the gifts to the pharaoh, who rewards him. The poem was copied down by a scribe named Imen-Ah, Son of Imeny, but its author is unknown.

Answer: Ireland

Poetry was so important in ancient Ireland that poets were given special protections and privileges under the law, and were even legally classified by their level of skill. Every Irish king had a resident poet, and there were many itinerant poets who roamed from place to place. The highest ranking poets were called "ollamhs," and there was a chief poet for the entire country known as the Ard-Ollamh, or Ollamh Érenn. The Ollamh Érenn was considered the social equal of the High King of Ireland. This post continued even after the fall of the High Kings, into the 16th century.

Poets in Ireland served many functions. One was memorizing their master's pedigree back through hundreds of generations, and reciting tales of the ancient Irish heroes. Another was praising his patron's deeds on the battlefield, his virtues, and his hospitality. Kings and nobles were required by law to provide food and shelter to any wandering poet who asked for it, and if the treatment he received did not meet his expectations, the poet might compose a satire that would make his host the laughingstock of the country. In ancient Ireland the wrath of a poet was something to be feared by all.

The ancient Gaelic society fell into decline at the beginning of the 17th century, but many ancient poems in the Irish language have been preserved. Irish poetry is some of the oldest and most beautiful in Europe.

Answer: 1837

"Beowulf" has a rather curious history. It is preserved in a manuscript written around the year 1000. The manuscript was written in England, and had been known to exist for a long time, but it wasn't until around 1800 that it attracted the attention of scholars. They still don't agree when the poem itself was composed; some say it was written at the same time the manuscript was penned, others claim it could date from as early as the 7th century. Although it is considered the earliest English poem, none of the events described take place in England. Why did it need to be translated? Well, here's the opening line in Old English: "Hw¿t, wç Gâr-Dena in gçardagum." This is supposed to mean "What were we War-Danes in our yore-days?" I'll take their word for it.

Curiously enough, "Beowulf" was translated into Latin and Danish before anyone got around to translating it into modern English.

Answer: The Canterbury Tales

Most people can read "The Canterbury Tales" in the original and understand most of it; spelling was still a problem, there were some grammatical differences, and a lot of words have taken on different meanings since Chaucer wrote his masterpiece, but for the most part, "The Canterbury Tales" sounds like English.

Modern English developed in the 16th century; Shakespeare wrote in modern English, for example, no matter what you may think.

Answer: Sir Philip Sidney

The sonnet originated in Italy in the 13th century; it means "little sound." English poets, such as Thomas Wyatt, began experimenting with the sonnet in the 16th century. It wasn't until the publication of Sidney's "Astrophel and Stella" in 1591, however, that sonnets really caught on.

After that sonnet sequence was published, everyone began writing them. The sonnet can take many forms; in English it is usually a poem of 14 lines written in iambic pentameter. The most famous sonnets are those of William Shakespeare, which were published in 1609.

The 154 sonnets contain some of the most beautiful poetry ever written. Shakespeare used a rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Poems written in this mode are still called "Shakespearean sonnets." Interestingly enough, Sir Philip Sidney, the guy who started it all, usually wrote 16 line sonnets.

Answer: Christopher Marlowe

Marlowe wasn't the first man to write a play in blank verse for the English stage, but it was the unprecedented success of his play, "Tamburlaine," that made blank verse the norm for serious drama in in the Elizabethan theatre. Blank verse is poetry without rhyme, but with a consistent meter, usually iambic pentameter. An "iamb" is a metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed syllable; pentameter means there are five stressed and five unstressed syllables in a line. English tends to fall naturally into an iambic pattern.

A line written in strict iambic pentameter would sound something like "da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM." This line from "Richard III" is in perfect iambic pentameter: "And all the clouds that low'r'd upon our house." Read it aloud and you will be able to hear the tempo of the line. Of course, if every line were written in iambic pentameter, the speeches would sound very sing-song, so the stresses are varied a bit, and sometimes an extra syllable is thrown in here and there, but read any Elizabethan tragedy, and you will see that most lines consist of ten syllables, five of which are stressed. Blank verse was usually reserved for serious drama, and comedies continued to be written in prose; when a tragedy had a comic scene inserted, that would be in prose as well.

Answer: Artist

At the age of 14, Blake was apprenticed to the famous engraver, James Basire, whom he served for seven years. Blake was a skilled painter and etcher, but he made his living primarily by producing engravings which were used as book illustrations. Blake was undoubtedly a very fine poet as well as a talented artist, but he was also something of an eccentric. Throughout his lifetime he had "visions," and when he invented the technique of relief etching, he claimed it was revealed to him by his dead brother in a dream. Blake was extremely critical of many of his contemporaries, particularly Sir Joshua Reynolds, about whom he wrote "the man was born to depress art." He was also convinced that he was being swindled by his publisher, Robert Cromek: "A petty sneaking knave I knew - O! Mr. Cromek, how do you do?"

Answer: Villanelle

The villanelle originated in France, but became popular with English poets around the middle of the 19th century. A villanelle consists of 19 lines, five three line stanzas followed by one four line stanza. The first and third lines of the first stanza are called "refrains," and are repeated alternately at the end of the following stanzas, and then comprise a couplet ending the final stanza. Sound complicated? Well, it is.

A villanelle is one of the most difficult poems to write, or least write well.

Other famous villanelles include Theodore Roethke's "The Waking," and "If I Could Tell You," by W.H. Auden. If you are taking a class in poetry and your teacher orders you to write a villanelle, you may safely assume that he/she is a sadist.

Answer: Robert Graves

Most people probably know Robert Graves for his novels "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the God," which were turned into a popular miniseries by the BBC. But he began his career as poet, and published over fifty volumes of poetry, translations, and poetical criticism. Sadly, these words are as true today as they were when Graves first said them. Very few people can make a living writing poetry, unless it's by writing verses for greeting cards. Poetry will enrich your life, but not your bank account. If you enjoy writing poetry, by all means do so, but look upon it as a hobby, not a vocation.

The best most of us can expect is the occasional acceptance by an obscure magazine, for which we will be paid in copies, not money. If we are really lucky, we may win a prize in a competition.

But most poets toil in relative anonymity. Still, it is a very prideful thing to write a poem that expresses one's feelings accurately and displays some skill with words. Few poets become rich or famous, but many derive a great deal of satisfaction from this most ancient of arts.