I'm in Love (Part II) Trivia Quiz

Answer: Walt Whitman

One evening, the American poet Walt Whitman (then 45) was a passenger on the 21-year-old Peter George Doyle's horsecar. Doyle wrote of their encounter: "The night was very stormy. . . He was the only passenger, it was a lonely night, so I thought I would go in and talk with him. Something in me made me do it and something in him drew me that way.

He used to say there was something in me had the same effect on him. Anyway, I went into the car. We were familiar at once-I put my hand on his knee-we understood." The two quickly forged a deep friendship that lasted until the poet's death in 1892. Doyle's niece referred to him as a homosexual, and many biographers believe that he and Walt Whitman had a romantic and/or physical relationship, though there is no direct evidence of the fact.

Answer: Dante Aligehieri

A woman named Beatrice inspired Dante Aligehieri's "Vita Nuova" and a woman named Beatrice appears as a guide in "La Divina Commedia." Most, but not all, scholars identify Dante's love as Beatrice di Folco Portinari, the daughter of a banker who live in Florence near Dante's house. She was married to an influential man of the city and died at the age of 24.

Answer: John Donne

When he was 25, the poet John Donne was appointed chief secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. Donne fell for Egerton's niece, Anne Moore, and eloped with her in 1601. As a consequence, Donne was dismissed from his position and put in Fleet Prison, but he was soon set free when the marriage was proven to be valid. Donne managed to get elected as an MP in 1602, but it was not a paid position, and so the couple struggled financially.

In 1615, he was ordained as an Anglican priest and appointed as a royal chaplain.

His wife died after giving birth to their twelfth child. He is famous for both his religious poetry, including his holy sonnets, and his secular poetry, which often celebrates physical love.

Answer: T.S. Eliot

Eliot was unhappily married and separated from his first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood, in 1932, but they remained legally married. The next year, she was committed to a mental hospital, where she lived until she died in 1938. After that, he went about in public with Mary Trevelyan, who wanted to marry him, but the two never did.

Instead, in 1957, the 68-year-old Eliot married his 30-year-old secretary, Esmé Valerie Fletcher. T.S. Eliot is famous for "The Wastelands" and his "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which contains the line: "In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo."

Answer: John Milton

"Paradise Lost" author John Milton was a Puritan poet and pamphleteer who supported the Commonwealth. When the Restoration occurred in 1660, he went into hiding, and his writings were burned. He emerged only in response to a general pardon. Still, he was arrested and imprisoned until influential friends intervened and arranged for his release.

In 1663, he married his third wife, Elizabeth Mynshull, who was 31 years younger than he. They remained married until Milton died twelve years later, and Mynshull never remarried.

A plaque on the wall of the Mynshull House describes her as his "3rd and Best wife."

Answer: Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Although Tennyson had known Emily Sarah Sellwood since she was a child, the two did not grow close until Emily's sister Louisa married Alfred's brother Charles. Sarah and Alfred married in 1850, at which point she became Lady Tennyson. Emily went on to give him two sons and to set some of his poems to music.

Answer: Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou married British construction worker and painter Paul Du Feu. Angelou told "People Magazine" in a 1975 interview, "He said that if I were British or he Black he'd be agreeable to merely live together. But with the difference in cultures, he wanted to make a public statement. So we married." They liked the wedding so much, Angelou said, "and love each other so much, that we've been married twice since." The couple divorced, however, in 1983.

Answer: Edna St. Vincet Millay

In 1923, Edna St. Vincent Millay married Eugen Jan Boissevain. He considered himself a feminist, supported her in her career, and took charge of many domestic duties. Over their 26-year marriage, both had other lovers. One of Millay's was George Dillon, a University of Chicago student fourteen years her junior, whom she met when he attended one of her readings.

Their love affair was the inspiration for her "Fatal Interview," a collection of sonnets.

Answer: Pablo Neruda

The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda divorced Marijke Antonieta Hagenaar Vogelzang in 1936 and married Delia del Carril, an Argentine woman who was twenty years older than him. When he was in Mexico in 1949, Neruda suffered from illness, and Matilde Urrutia, a Chilean singer, was hired to care for him.

They began an affair that would lead to marriage in 1966, after he divorced Delia del Carril, and they were married until he died in 1973.

Answer: Shel Silverstein

The popular 20th century children's poet Shel Silverstein had a very adult side. He never married, but in his own biography, he reported sleeping with hundreds, "perhaps thousands" of women, and he had two children with two different women.