Poetry

For questions where you're given the title of a poem, and asked who wrote it – and other stuff about poets (including poets laureate) – see Poets.

For questions where you're given a quotation from a poem, and asked for the title and/or who wrote it, see Poems.

This page is intended to cover everything else that you might get asked about poetry.  It includes poetical terminology, questions about poems themselves and collections of poetry), and the details of the words of poems.

It starts with some numbers, and then deals with two famous poems that are perennial favourites with question setters.

Numbers

Lines in a haiku		3
Lines in a clerihew		4
Lines in a limerick		5
Lines in a sonnet		14
Syllables in a haiku		17

The Song of Hiawatha (Longfellow)

Any of these questions might be asked the other way round.  For example: "Which title character of a famous poem had a name that meant "He makes rivers?"

Hiawatha means		He makes rivers
Hiawatha married		Minniehaha
Minniehaha means		Laughing Water
Hiawatha's mother		Wenonah
Hiawatha's father (Mudjekeewis) was		The west wind
Hiawatha's grandmother ("Daughter of the Moon")		Nokomis
Tribe on whose legends Longfellow based his poem		Ojibwa (pl. Ojibwe)
Lake beside which Hiawatha lives		Gitchee Gumee
English name of Gitchee Gumee		Lake Superior

Tam o'shanter (Burns)

Title character escapes from a chasing crowd of warlocks and witches, by riding his horse across a stream (witches can't cross running water)		Tam o'shanter
A "cutty–sark" (as described in Tam o'shanter) is (in English)		A short underskirt
Name of the witch (a "winsome wench and waulie") that wears the "cutty–sark" – and nearly catches Tam as he flees for his life, only managing to grab the tail of his trusty mount		Nannie
Name of Tam's trusty grey mare		Maggie (or Meg)
Souter (cobbler) Johnny was the "ancient, trusty, drouthy (thirsty) crony" of		Tam o'shanter
The town that "ne'eer a town surpasses / for honest men and bonnie lasses" (according to Burns in Tam o' Shanter) – giving the football team its nickname (the Honest Men)		Ayr

The Owl and the Pussycat (Edward Lear)

Colour of the boat that they went to sea in		Pea green
They wrapped their money (and possibly also their honey) in		A five pound note
They sailed away for		A year and a day
Tree that grew in the land that they sailed to		Bong tree
Sold them his ring		Pig (piggy–wig)
The piggy–wig kept his ring		At the end of his nose
Cost of the ring		One shilling
Creature (that lived on the hill) by which they were married		Turkey
They dined on		Mince
		... and slices of quince
Type of spoon that they ate their quince and mince with (word coined by Lear)		Runcible

Terminology

Metric Feet

A 'metric foot' is a basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line.

Stressed syllables are also known as heavy or long syllables. Unstressed syllables are also known as light or short syllables.

One stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones ('tum–ti–ti')		Dactyl
One stressed syllable followed by one unstressed one ('tum–ti')		Iamb
Two stressed syllables ('tum–'tum)		Trochee (or choree, or choreus)
One unstressed syllable followed by one stressed one ('ti–'tum)		Trochee (or choree, or choreus)

Other

Poetry that doesn't rhyme		Blank verse
An irregular form of humorous biographical verse, invented by the popular English novelist E. C. Bentley (1875–1956), when still at school, and given his middle name		Clerihew
A mournful or plaintive poem or song – especially a lament for the dead – most famously used in the title of Thomas Gray's best–known poem		Elegy
Word describing a poem that depicts agriculture or rural life – originally the second major work by the Latin poet Virgil, written after the Eclogues and before the Aeneid		Georgic
Japanese mode of poetry with three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables respectively (total 17). (Strictly 17 morae, a Japanese phonetic unit which only partially corresponds to the syllable of languages such as English.) Developed from the older hokku form in the late 19th century by Masaoka Shiki		Haiku
Form of verse, popularised in the 19th century (by Edward Lear among others) and first given this name in 1880 in a New Brunswick newspaper		Limerick
The art of versification and the study of poetic metre, rhyme etc. (but sounds as if it's about any writing other than poetry!)		Prosody
A collection of verses in a Persian form of four–line stanzas – best known in the Western world through one particular example		Rubaiyat
Poetic form with 19 lines – 5 stanzas of 3 lines each, and one of 4; rhyming scheme ABA, ABAA (A and B the same in each stanza). Introduced to English from French in the 19th century, an example is Dylan Thomas's Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (1951)		Villanelle

Titles

Wordsworth (first line and title): 'My heart leaps up when I behold ...		A rainbow in the sky'
Work by Shelley, read by Mick Jagger in Hyde Park, 1969, in memory of Brian Jones		Adonis
Title used by Dryden (for 1666) and Larkin (for 1963)		Annus Mirabilis
Written in 1927 by Max Ehrmann; became famous after being found at the deathbed of Adlai Stevenson in 1965; long thought to date from 1692 (which was in fact the foundation date of a church in Maryland whose rector included it in a compilation)		Desiderata
Written by W. B. Yeats, in "an attempt to reconstruct an old song from three lines imperfectly remembered by an old peasant woman in the village of Ballisodare, Sligo". Published in 1889 and set to music by the Irish composer and folk song collector Herbert Hughes in 1909, it has long been a standard in the Irish folk song repertoire		Down by the Salley Gardens
Poem by Keats, based on the Greek myth of a beautiful young shepherd loved by the Moon goddess Selene		Endymion
Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, is the setting for		Gray's Elegy
Far from the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy) and Paths of Glory (Humphrey Cobb – the source for Kubrick's film): titles came from
First published in 1876: described on its title page as "an Agony in Eight Fits"		The Hunting of the Snark (Lewis Carroll)
Epic poem by Keats, telling of the despair of the Titans after their fall to the Olympians; title is the name of one of them, who was the father of Helios		Hyperion
Work by Kipling, voted Britain's most popular poem, in a BBC poll in 1995		If
Popular poem by Canadian officer John McCrae, evoking the desolation of WWI battlefields – written in May 1915, published in Punch in December 1915		In Flanders Fields
Common name for William Blake's 1808 poem And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time (includes the phrases "dark satanic mills", "chariot of fire", and "England's green and pleasant land") – set to music in 1916 by Sir Hubert Parry		Jerusalem
Composition was curtailed, according to its author (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) when his reverie was interrupted by "a person from Porlock"		Kubla Khan
Thomas Moore's epic poem (1817) about India and Kashmir		Lalla Rookh
Poem by George Meredith that inspired a Vaughan Williams fantasia		The Lark Ascending
Poem by William Barnes, set to music by Vaughan Williams in 1901 (his first published work)		My Orcha'd in Linden Lea
Famous sonnet by Shelley, believed to refer to Ramesses II of Egypt (its title is his Greek name): opening line "I met a traveller from an ancient land ... "		Ozymandias
Work by Milton: took seven years to write, first published in ten volumes in 1667; sold to publisher Samuel Simmons for £5, with a further £5 once 1,300 copies had been sold and a third £5 if the second 1,300 copies were sold (in the earliest surviving publishing contract)		Paradise Lost
Allegorical narrative poem, written between 1370 and 1390 – one of the greatest works of English Literature from the Middle Ages; attributed to William Langland, of whom nothing else is known		Piers Plowman
Late 14th–century Middle English chivalric romance: one of the best–known Arthurian stories, begins in Camelot on New Year's Day. By an unknown poet known as 'the Pearl Poet'		Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Work by T. S. Eliot, in five parts: The Burial of the Dead, A Game of Chess, The Fire Sermon, Death by Water, What the Thunder Said		The Waste Land

Collections

Ted Hughes's 1998 book, posthumous winner of Whitbread Book of the Year (1999)		The Birthday Letters
Hilaire Belloc's 1907 collection for children: eleven stories (in verse) about children who misbehaved and got their just deserts: e.g. Jim, who ran away from his nurse and was eaten by a lion and Matilda, who told lies and was burned to death		Cautionary Tales
Tennyson's series of twelve narrative poems on Arthurian themes (1859–85): retells the legend of King Arthur, his knights, his love for Guinevere and her tragic betrayal of him, and the rise and fall of Arthur's kingdom		Idylls of the King
Life's work of US poet Walt Whitman, first published in 1855 and constantly revised until his death in 1892; controversial at the time for its overt sexuality		Leaves of Grass
1798: collection by Wordsworth, with a few by Coleridge including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; said to mark the beginning of the English Romantic movement		Lyrical Ballads
(The) Rum Tum Tugger, the Jellicles, Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer, Old Deuteronomy (patriarch of the Jellicles), Mr. Mistoffeles, Macavity (the Mystery Cat), Gus (the Theatre Cat), Bustopher Jones (the Cat About Town), Skimbleshanks (the Railway Cat): all appear in		Old Possum's book of Practical Cats
Collection of "experimental prose poetry" by Bob Dylan, first published (apparently without his consent) in 1966		Tarantula

Details

Shot by Coleridge's Ancient Mariner (and hung around his neck)		Albatross
The sacred river that flows through Xanadu (the palace of Kubla Khan), in Coleridge's poem		Alph
The title character stops a man ("one of three") on his way to a wedding feast, to tell him his tale; Life–in–Death wins his life in a game of dice with Death (who wins those of his fellow crew members)		Ancient mariner
Body of water named in Edward Lear's The Pobble Who Has No Toes as the one he was swimming across when he lost his toes (nobody knew how)		Bristol Channel
Hunting of the Snark (Lewis Carroll): variety of the Snark, when they finally caught it		Boojum
Subject of the first clerihew: " ... abominated gravy / He lived in the odium / Of having discovered sodium"		Sir Humphry Davy
Edward Lear character: "was happy and gay, till he fell in love with a Jumbly Girl"		The Dong (with a Luminous Nose)
Wrecked on the reef of Norman's Woe (in a poem by Longfellow)		The Hesperus
Had "jaws that bite, claws that catch"; slain with a "vorpal blade", which "went snicker–snack" (Lewis Carroll)		The Jabberwock
Edward Lear: "their heads are green and their hands are grey, and they went to sea in a sieve"		The Jumblies
The last and best–known line from the 1899 poem Sympathy, by the African–American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar		I know why the caged bird sings!
Tennyson: Excalibur was given to Arthur by		The Lady of the Lake
Walt Whitman's O Captain! My Captain! is a lament for (historical figure)		Abraham Lincoln
1798 battle described in the poem Casabianca ("The boy stood on the burning deck … ")		The Nile (Aboukir Bay)
From T. S. Eliot's Book of Practical Cats: described as "patriarch of the Jellicles"; "[he's] buried nine wives ... And his numerous progeny prospers and thrives"		Old Deuteronomy
Dante's Inferno (Part I of the Divine Comedy): "All hope abandon, ye who enter here"		Over the gates of Hell
Word invented by Milton (in Paradise Lost) for the capital of Hell		Pandæmonium
The Masque of Anarchy – described (by Wikipedia) as "perhaps the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent resistance" was written by Shelley in response to		Peterloo Massacre
Referred to by Kipling as "the widow at Windsor" (in the title of one of his Barrack–Room Ballads, first published in 1892)		Queen Victoria
Opening word of John Masefield's Cargoes (1903): defined by dictionary.com as "an ancient Roman galley with five banks of oars on each side"		Quinquireme
From T. S. Eliot's Book of Practical Cats: a.k.a. the Railway Cat; "Every now and then he has a cup of tea / With perhaps a drop of Scotch while he's keeping on the watch"		Skimbleshanks
John Betjeman: "Come friendly bombs, and fall on ... "		Slough
The Rape of the Lock (Pope): the lock ends up as a		Star
The main subject of Milton's Paradise Regained (1671) is		The temptation of Christ
John Gay's 1716 burlesque poem, loosely based on the Satires of the Latin poet Juvenal (active in the late 1st and early 2nd century AD), subtitled The Art of Walking the Streets of London – named after the Roman goddess of crossroads		Trivia
Barrack Room Ballads (Kipling): Gunga Din's occupation		Water carrier
River in which the Pied Piper drowned the rats (according to Browning)		Weser

© Haydn Thompson 2017–24