Poetry Quiz
Nevermore, daffodils and the slithy toves: 15 questions on the poems and poets everyone half remembers.
Which poet wrote The Raven, with its haunting refrain "Nevermore"?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Edgar Allan Poe
Poe published The Raven in the New York Evening Mirror in January 1845 and it made him famous almost overnight, though he was paid only about nine dollars for it.
Baltimore's NFL team, the Ravens, is named after the poem because Poe lived and died in the city.
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" is the opening line of a sonnet by which poet?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
William Shakespeare
The line opens Sonnet 18, the best known of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, which promises that the beloved's beauty will live forever in the poem's lines.
The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man, and scholars still argue about who he was.
Wordsworth's poem beginning "I wandered lonely as a cloud" describes a host of which flowers?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Daffodils
The poem recalls a walk by Ullswater in the Lake District in 1802 when Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came upon a long belt of golden daffodils beside the water.
Dorothy's journal entry describing the flowers dancing in the wind supplied much of the imagery for the poem, which William wrote two years later.
How many lines does a sonnet have?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
14
A sonnet is a fourteen line poem, whether in the Italian form of an octave and a sestet or the English form of three quatrains and a closing rhymed couplet.
The word comes from the Italian sonetto, meaning little song, and the form was perfected by Petrarch in the fourteenth century.
Which American poet wrote The Road Not Taken, which ends "And that has made all the difference"?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Robert Frost
Frost published the poem in 1916 and later said it was a gentle joke at the expense of his friend Edward Thomas, who could never decide which path to take on their walks.
Frost won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry four times, more than any other poet, and read at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.
What is the name of the humorous five line verse form that rhymes AABBA?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Limerick
The limerick's bouncing rhythm and twist ending were popularised by Edward Lear's A Book of Nonsense in 1846, though its link to the Irish city is uncertain.
Lear's own limericks usually repeated the first line's ending as the last line, a habit later writers dropped in favour of a punchline.
A traditional Japanese haiku contains how many syllables in total?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
17
A haiku runs to three lines of five, seven and five syllables, usually capturing a single moment in nature and containing a word that hints at the season.
The seventeenth century master Matsuo Bashō wrote the most famous haiku of all, about a frog jumping into an old pond.
Who wrote the villanelle that begins "Do not go gentle into that good night"?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Dylan Thomas
The Welsh poet wrote it in 1951 as his father was dying, urging him to rage against the dying of the light, and it is now a staple of funerals and films.
Thomas died in New York in 1953 at 39 after a drinking bout, and the poem was published in his collection In Country Sleep the year before.
Which poet wrote Still I Rise and the memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Maya Angelou
Angelou published Still I Rise in her 1978 collection And Still I Rise, and its defiant refrain became an anthem; she later read a poem at Bill Clinton's 1993 inauguration.
Before she was a writer, Angelou worked as a streetcar conductor, a dancer, a singer and a journalist in Egypt and Ghana.
"'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe" opens which nonsense poem?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Jabberwocky
Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky appears in Through the Looking-Glass, where Alice finds it printed backwards and needs Humpty Dumpty to explain its invented words.
Several of Carroll's invented words from the poem entered the dictionary, including chortle and galumph, both now listed in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Which epic poem by John Milton tells the story of Satan's rebellion and the fall of Adam and Eve?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Paradise Lost
Milton published his blank verse epic in 1667 in ten books, later revised to twelve, and dictated the whole of it to assistants because he had gone completely blind.
Its Satan is so charismatic that William Blake claimed Milton was of the Devil's party without knowing it.
Which reclusive American poet wrote "Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me"?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Emily Dickinson
Dickinson wrote nearly 1,800 poems in her home in Amherst, Massachusetts, but fewer than a dozen were published in her lifetime, most of them heavily edited.
Her sister Lavinia found the poems in a locked chest after Dickinson's death in 1886 and fought to have them published.
Who wrote Ozymandias, the sonnet about a shattered statue inscribed "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair"?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Shelley wrote the poem in late 1817 in a friendly competition with his friend Horace Smith, and it was published in January 1818, as a colossal statue of Ramesses II was bound for the British Museum.
Ozymandias is the Greek name for the pharaoh Ramesses II, and the poem's inscription echoes a description by the historian Diodorus Siculus.
Which poet wrote The Waste Land, the 1922 modernist poem that begins "April is the cruellest month"?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
T. S. Eliot
Eliot's 434 line poem in five sections, full of fragments from many languages and myths, was heavily edited by Ezra Pound, to whom Eliot dedicated it.
Eliot also wrote the whimsical Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, which became the musical Cats.
Which Beat poet wrote Howl, the 1956 poem that led to an obscenity trial for its publisher?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Allen Ginsberg
Ginsberg first read Howl at the Six Gallery in San Francisco in 1955, and City Lights published it the next year; a judge ruled it had redeeming social importance.
The poem is dedicated to Carl Solomon, whom Ginsberg met in a psychiatric hospital in 1949.
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All Literature quizzes →About the Poetry Quiz
Poetry sticks in the memory like nothing else. Most people can finish the line "I wandered lonely as a cloud", know that a raven once croaked Nevermore, and can recite at least one limerick they would never repeat at work. Behind those fragments are the poets, forms and stories that give them their power.
These 15 questions cover famous first lines, the poets behind them, and the shapes poems take, from the sonnet and the haiku to the nonsense verse of Jabberwocky and the Beat howl of 1956. It suits anyone who studied poetry at school and wants to see how much stuck, with a few harder questions for serious readers.
You will find 15 multiple choice questions here, each with four options. Difficulty: Hard. Most people finish in about 6 minutes, and every answer comes with a short explanation and one extra fact worth keeping.
How to play
Read the question and pick one of the four answers. The correct answer is revealed straight away with a short explanation, then press Next question to keep going. At the end you get your score out of 15 and a full review of your round. Play again any time and the questions arrive in a fresh order. There is no timer and no account.
Good to know before you play
Which poets appear in this quiz?
Poe, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Frost, Dylan Thomas, Maya Angelou, Lewis Carroll, Milton, Emily Dickinson, Shelley, T. S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg and Dante among others.
Does the quiz ask about poetic forms?
Yes. Three questions cover the sonnet, the haiku and the limerick, including their line and syllable counts.
Is the quiz hard?
The first five questions are ones most people can get, the middle group needs a little reading, and the last few reward people who know their poetry.
Answer key: all 15 questions with explanations
- Which poet wrote The Raven, with its haunting refrain "Nevermore"?
Edgar Allan Poe Poe published The Raven in the New York Evening Mirror in January 1845 and it made him famous almost overnight, though he was paid only about nine dollars for it. Baltimore's NFL team, the Ravens, is named after the poem because Poe lived and died in the city. - "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" is the opening line of a sonnet by which poet?
William Shakespeare The line opens Sonnet 18, the best known of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, which promises that the beloved's beauty will live forever in the poem's lines. The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man, and scholars still argue about who he was. - Wordsworth's poem beginning "I wandered lonely as a cloud" describes a host of which flowers?
Daffodils The poem recalls a walk by Ullswater in the Lake District in 1802 when Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came upon a long belt of golden daffodils beside the water. Dorothy's journal entry describing the flowers dancing in the wind supplied much of the imagery for the poem, which William wrote two years later. - How many lines does a sonnet have?
14 A sonnet is a fourteen line poem, whether in the Italian form of an octave and a sestet or the English form of three quatrains and a closing rhymed couplet. The word comes from the Italian sonetto, meaning little song, and the form was perfected by Petrarch in the fourteenth century. - Which American poet wrote The Road Not Taken, which ends "And that has made all the difference"?
Robert Frost Frost published the poem in 1916 and later said it was a gentle joke at the expense of his friend Edward Thomas, who could never decide which path to take on their walks. Frost won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry four times, more than any other poet, and read at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. - What is the name of the humorous five line verse form that rhymes AABBA?
Limerick The limerick's bouncing rhythm and twist ending were popularised by Edward Lear's A Book of Nonsense in 1846, though its link to the Irish city is uncertain. Lear's own limericks usually repeated the first line's ending as the last line, a habit later writers dropped in favour of a punchline. - A traditional Japanese haiku contains how many syllables in total?
17 A haiku runs to three lines of five, seven and five syllables, usually capturing a single moment in nature and containing a word that hints at the season. The seventeenth century master Matsuo Bashō wrote the most famous haiku of all, about a frog jumping into an old pond. - Who wrote the villanelle that begins "Do not go gentle into that good night"?
Dylan Thomas The Welsh poet wrote it in 1951 as his father was dying, urging him to rage against the dying of the light, and it is now a staple of funerals and films. Thomas died in New York in 1953 at 39 after a drinking bout, and the poem was published in his collection In Country Sleep the year before. - Which poet wrote Still I Rise and the memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings?
Maya Angelou Angelou published Still I Rise in her 1978 collection And Still I Rise, and its defiant refrain became an anthem; she later read a poem at Bill Clinton's 1993 inauguration. Before she was a writer, Angelou worked as a streetcar conductor, a dancer, a singer and a journalist in Egypt and Ghana. - "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe" opens which nonsense poem?
Jabberwocky Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky appears in Through the Looking-Glass, where Alice finds it printed backwards and needs Humpty Dumpty to explain its invented words. Several of Carroll's invented words from the poem entered the dictionary, including chortle and galumph, both now listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. - Which epic poem by John Milton tells the story of Satan's rebellion and the fall of Adam and Eve?
Paradise Lost Milton published his blank verse epic in 1667 in ten books, later revised to twelve, and dictated the whole of it to assistants because he had gone completely blind. Its Satan is so charismatic that William Blake claimed Milton was of the Devil's party without knowing it. - Which reclusive American poet wrote "Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me"?
Emily Dickinson Dickinson wrote nearly 1,800 poems in her home in Amherst, Massachusetts, but fewer than a dozen were published in her lifetime, most of them heavily edited. Her sister Lavinia found the poems in a locked chest after Dickinson's death in 1886 and fought to have them published. - Who wrote Ozymandias, the sonnet about a shattered statue inscribed "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair"?
Percy Bysshe Shelley Shelley wrote the poem in late 1817 in a friendly competition with his friend Horace Smith, and it was published in January 1818, as a colossal statue of Ramesses II was bound for the British Museum. Ozymandias is the Greek name for the pharaoh Ramesses II, and the poem's inscription echoes a description by the historian Diodorus Siculus. - Which poet wrote The Waste Land, the 1922 modernist poem that begins "April is the cruellest month"?
T. S. Eliot Eliot's 434 line poem in five sections, full of fragments from many languages and myths, was heavily edited by Ezra Pound, to whom Eliot dedicated it. Eliot also wrote the whimsical Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, which became the musical Cats. - Which Beat poet wrote Howl, the 1956 poem that led to an obscenity trial for its publisher?
Allen Ginsberg Ginsberg first read Howl at the Six Gallery in San Francisco in 1955, and City Lights published it the next year; a judge ruled it had redeeming social importance. The poem is dedicated to Carl Solomon, whom Ginsberg met in a psychiatric hospital in 1949.
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