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American Poetry — GK Questions with Answers

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26 questions
  1. The refrain of Poe’s "The Raven" is —
    1. Evermore
    2. Nevermore
    3. Lenore
    4. No more
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Nevermore

    "Nevermore", spoken by the raven perched on the bust of Pallas.

  2. In "The Philosophy of Composition", Poe says the most poetical topic is —
    1. war
    2. the death of a beautiful woman
    3. nature
    4. immortality
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) the death of a beautiful woman

    A much-quoted and much-criticised claim.

  3. Leaves of Grass was first published with —
    1. fifty poems
    2. twelve poems
    3. one long poem
    4. a hundred poems
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) twelve poems

    Twelve untitled poems in 1855, with no author’s name on the title page.

  4. "Song of Myself" is divided into —
    1. 12 sections
    2. 36 sections
    3. 52 sections
    4. 100 sections
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) 52 sections

    52 sections in the final version.

  5. Whitman’s elegy using the symbols of the lilac, the star and the hermit thrush is —
    1. "O Captain! My Captain!"
    2. "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d"
    3. "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"
    4. "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d"

    The great Lincoln elegy of 1865–66.

  6. Which of these is NOT typical of Whitman?
    1. Free verse
    2. Catalogues
    3. Regular rhyme and metre
    4. Anaphora
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) Regular rhyme and metre

    Whitman wrote free verse; "O Captain!" is the rare rhymed exception.

  7. How many of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published in her lifetime?
    1. none
    2. about ten
    3. about a hundred
    4. about five hundred
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) about ten

    About ten, of nearly 1,800.

  8. Dickinson’s characteristic stanza is —
    1. blank verse
    2. the hymn or common metre
    3. terza rima
    4. the Spenserian stanza
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) the hymn or common metre

    Alternating eight- and six-syllable lines — her poems fit hymn tunes.

  9. "Because I could not stop for Death — / He kindly stopped for me" personifies death as —
    1. a reaper
    2. a courteous suitor
    3. a judge
    4. a thief
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) a courteous suitor

    Death arrives as a civil gentleman driving a carriage.

  10. The three rules of Imagism were set out by —
    1. T. E. Hulme
    2. Ezra Pound
    3. Amy Lowell
    4. H. D.
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Ezra Pound

    Pound, in 1913.

  1. "In a Station of the Metro" is famous for being —
    1. a sonnet
    2. two lines long
    3. in blank verse
    4. a villanelle
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) two lines long

    Two lines, built by superposition of one image on another.

  2. Who described free verse as "playing tennis with the net down"?
    1. Pound
    2. Frost
    3. Eliot
    4. Stevens
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Frost

    Robert Frost, defending traditional form.

  3. "Good fences make good neighbours" appears in —
    1. "Birches"
    2. "Mending Wall"
    3. "The Road Not Taken"
    4. "Home Burial"
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) "Mending Wall"

    The neighbour says it twice in "Mending Wall"; the speaker questions it.

  4. Frost’s "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" ends with —
    1. "and sorry I could not travel both"
    2. "And miles to go before I sleep"
    3. "One could do worse"
    4. "Something there is that doesn’t love a wall"
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) "And miles to go before I sleep"

    The line is repeated to close the poem.

  5. "No ideas but in things" is the principle of —
    1. Wallace Stevens
    2. William Carlos Williams
    3. Marianne Moore
    4. E. E. Cummings
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) William Carlos Williams

    Williams, in Paterson.

  6. Which poet wrote "imaginary gardens with real toads in them"?
    1. Elizabeth Bishop
    2. Marianne Moore
    3. Amy Lowell
    4. H. D.
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Marianne Moore

    Marianne Moore, in her poem "Poetry".

  7. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" was written by —
    1. Countee Cullen
    2. Langston Hughes
    3. Claude McKay
    4. Jean Toomer
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Langston Hughes

    Langston Hughes, the central poet of the Harlem Renaissance.

  8. Claude McKay’s protest poem "If We Must Die" is written in which form?
    1. free verse
    2. the sonnet
    3. the ballad
    4. blank verse
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) the sonnet

    McKay used the traditional sonnet for protest.

  9. The term "confessional poetry" first described which book?
    1. Ariel
    2. Life Studies
    3. The Dream Songs
    4. Heart’s Needle
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Life Studies

    M. L. Rosenthal used it of Robert Lowell’s Life Studies (1959).

  10. "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" are from —
    1. The Colossus
    2. Ariel
    3. The Bell Jar
    4. Crossing the Water
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Ariel

    Ariel, published in 1965 after Plath’s death.

  1. Howl was published by —
    1. Grove Press
    2. City Lights
    3. New Directions
    4. Faber
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) City Lights

    City Lights, Ferlinghetti’s San Francisco bookshop; the obscenity trial ended in acquittal.

  2. "Projective verse" or composition by field is associated with —
    1. Allen Ginsberg
    2. Charles Olson
    3. Robert Creeley
    4. Gary Snyder
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Charles Olson

    Charles Olson of the Black Mountain school.

  3. The first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize was —
    1. Langston Hughes
    2. Gwendolyn Brooks
    3. Robert Hayden
    4. Toni Morrison
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Gwendolyn Brooks

    Gwendolyn Brooks, in 1950, for Annie Allen.

  4. Elizabeth Bishop’s "One Art" is written as a —
    1. sonnet
    2. villanelle
    3. sestina
    4. ode
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) villanelle

    A villanelle — "the art of losing isn’t hard to master".

  5. Which American songwriter won the Nobel Prize for Literature?
    1. Leonard Cohen
    2. Bob Dylan
    3. Paul Simon
    4. Bruce Springsteen
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Bob Dylan

    Bob Dylan, in 2016.

  6. Whitman and Dickinson are contrasted chiefly as —
    1. both free-verse poets
    2. public and expansive against private and compressed
    3. both hymn-metre poets
    4. both widely published in their lifetimes
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) public and expansive against private and compressed

    Whitman is long-lined and democratic; Dickinson compressed and inward.

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