Poetry Study Guide

Literature 2,021 clues | 220 recurring answers

Topic Overview Study Guide Practice

220

answers to learn

41 Must-Know

58 Should-Know

121 Worth Knowing

Quick Reference: Must-Know Answers

These appear 8+ times. Memorize these first.

Robert Frost 54 Emily Dickinson 42 Walt Whitman 38 Robert Burns 31 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 29 Elizabeth Barrett Browning 28 John Keats 27 William Wordsworth 25 Carl Sandburg 24 Percy Shelley 23 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 23 T.S. Eliot 22 Tennyson 21 Allen Ginsberg 21 Edgar Allan Poe 21 Lord Byron 19 Dylan Thomas 18 John Donne 18 Sylvia Plath 17 John Milton 17 Ogden Nash 15 William Butler Yeats 15 Dante 14 Robert Browning 12 Edna St. Vincent Millay 12 E.E. Cummings 12 William Shakespeare 12 Langston Hughes 11 Geoffrey Chaucer 11 Alexander Pope 11 Evangeline 10 Joyce Kilmer 9 Annabel Lee 9 Emma Lazarus 9 William Blake 9 Rudyard Kipling 9 Sappho 8 Paul Revere 8 Ezra Pound 8 haiku 8 Maya Angelou 8

Answers by Category

Poetry

185 answers | 1,188 clues

Must-Know (37)

Robert Frost 54x 11.5% stumper $808 avg J:7 DJ:45 FJ:2

DJ $400 2018 Ezra Pound said "Death of the Hired Man" was this poet at his best, daring to write "in the natural speech of New England"

DJ $800 2016 In "Birches", this New England poet wrote that he'd like to "climb black branches up a snow-white trunk toward heaven"

J $1,000 2019 His "Mending Wall" says, "And on a day we meet to walk the line and set the wall between us once again"

Emily Dickinson 42x 9.8% stumper $715 avg J:9 DJ:32 FJ:1

DJ $200 1996 Her father, Edward, was treasurer of Amherst College 1835-1873, & also served in Congress

DJ $800 2018 The epitaph on this poet's grave marker in Amherst, Massachusetts simply says, "Called Back"

DJ $1,000 DD 1991 Poetess who wrote "I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you--nobody--too?"

Walt Whitman 38x 17.6% stumper $582 avg J:9 DJ:25 FJ:4

J $400 2022 His 1865 poem "O Captain! My Captain!" paid homage to President Lincoln, "fallen cold and dead"

DJ $600 1996 His "One's-Self I Sing" was originally published in 1867 under the title "Inscription"

DJ $1,000 DD 2000 The leaves of grass at this poet's grave surround a tomb of his own design in Harleigh Cemetery

Robert Burns 31x $532 avg J:8 DJ:23

DJ $200 1992 Some of his early poems like "The Brigs of Ayr" imitated those of another Scottish poet, Robert Fergusson

DJ $600 1996 For much of the winter of 1794-95, he served as acting supervisor for Dumfries, Scotland

DJ $1,600 2010 The poem "Highland Mary" is inscribed on the scroll at his statue's feet in Central Park's Literary Walk

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 29x 28.6% stumper $671 avg J:5 DJ:23 FJ:1

DJ $200 1999 "Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere"

DJ $600 1995 From 1835 to 1854, this "Evangeline" poet was a professor of modern languages at Harvard

DJ $1,000 1989 His tragic 1841 ballad "The Wreck of the Hesperus" was inspired by an actual shipwreck

Elizabeth Barrett Browning 28x 30.8% stumper $992 avg J:7 DJ:19 FJ:2

J $100 1993 Her "Last Poems" were compiled by her husband Robert & published the year after her death

DJ $600 1998 "O my palm-tree…rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare", she wrote in "Sonnets from the Portuguese"

J $1,000 2018 "I love thee freely, as men strive for right; I love thee purely, as they turn from praise"

John Keats 27x 22.2% stumper $893 avg J:9 DJ:18

J $300 1998 "Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!" wrote this poet in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

J $600 2006 Byron wrote, "Who killed" this poet? "'I,' says the quarterly, so savage and tartarly; 'Twas one of my feats'"

DJ $1,000 DD 2004 After his death in 1821, a fellow poet wrote that he was fragile & was "killed off by one critique"

William Wordsworth 25x 28.0% stumper $1,080 avg J:4 DJ:21

J $100 1989 Several of his poems were addressed to his sister Dorothy Wordsworth

J $500 1997 This Lake Poet wasn't widely appreciated by critics until he published "The River Duddon" in 1820

DJ $1,000 DD 2005 About one of his most famous poems, he said, "I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye"

Carl Sandburg 24x 9.1% stumper $882 avg J:2 DJ:20 FJ:2

DJ $400 2001 Included in his "Chicago Poems" collection is that one about fog coming "on little cat feet"

DJ $800 1991 This poet was born in Galesburg, Illinois to a Swedish immigrant whose original name was Danielson

DJ $1,200 2010 The "Complete Poems" of this "Chicago" man took the 1951 prize

Percy Shelley 23x 26.1% stumper $1,043 avg J:6 DJ:17

J $400 2015 "Queen Mab" was so fab /Was the groom of Frankenstein /Not waving, drowning

DJ $600 1998 In 1811 this poet was expelled from Oxford for writing the pamphlet "The Necessity of Atheism"

DJ $1,000 1998 His first wife, Harriet, was pregnant when he ran off with teenager Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 23x 11.1% stumper $933 avg J:2 DJ:16 FJ:5

DJ $400 2019 "I fear thee, ancient mariner! / I fear thy skinny hand!"

DJ $800 2014 His7-part1798poem tells of a senseless killing at sea--many deaths, much suffering & redemption

DJ $1,200 2002 In 1798 he received an annuity from Josiah & Thomas Wedgwood & his "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" was published

T.S. Eliot 22x 16.7% stumper $789 avg J:7 DJ:11 FJ:4

J $200 1999 "The dead tree gives no shelter", he observed in "The Waste Land"

J $500 1991 He said his title for "The Waste Land" was suggested by a book on the Grail legend

DJ $1,200 2007 His "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" says, "In the room the women come and go/ talking of Michelangelo"

Tennyson 21x 4.8% stumper $976 avg J:6 DJ:15

J $400 2014 He penned, "Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred"

DJ $800 2021 Dear lord! His "In Memoriam" was memorable enough to help him become Britain's laureate in 1850

J $1,000 2009 This lord's poem "Locksley Hall" tells of "pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales"

Allen Ginsberg 21x 9.5% stumper $781 avg J:2 DJ:19

J $200 2008 "Howl", his first book of poetry, was published by City Lights, a bookstore owned by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti

DJ $600 1997 In 1996 this "Howl" poet released a CD called "The Ballad of the Skeletons"

DJ $1,600 2011 A 1965 poem by this poet is titled "First Party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels"

Edgar Allan Poe 21x 4.8% stumper $633 avg J:4 DJ:17

DJ $200 1998 Late in his life, he was involved with at least 3 women but wedding bells tolled "Nevermore"

J $600 2008 He wrote, "An echo murmured back the word, 'Lenore!'--merely this and nothing more"

DJ $1,000 1993 Poet & mystery author whose 1849 poem "To My Mother" is a tribute to the mother of his late child bride

Lord Byron 19x 27.8% stumper $822 avg J:2 DJ:16 FJ:1

DJ $400 2026 Lady Caroline Lamb, once the lover of this poet, caricatured him as Lord Glenarvon in an 1816 novel

J $600 2007 "Don Juan's parents lived beside the river, a noble stream, and call'd the Guadalquivir"

DJ $1,000 1994 He began writing "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" during a visit to Albania

Dylan Thomas 18x 12.5% stumper $706 avg J:1 DJ:15 FJ:2

DJ $400 2021 This Welshman was famed for his lyrical writing & his bouts of drinking; one binge preceded his death in 1953

DJ $500 DD 1998 He did "Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" but died at age 39 after years of hard drinking & debauchery

DJ $1,100 DD 1990 20th c. poet heard here, reading one of his best-loved works:"Do not go gentle into that good night..."

John Donne 18x 29.4% stumper $1,335 avg J:1 DJ:16 FJ:1

DJ $400 DD 2019 "Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so"

DJ $500 DD 1993 Shortly before his death, this "Death Be Not Proud" poet posed for a portrait in a funeral shroud

DJ $1,000 1996 In his prose "Devotions", this poet wrote, "No man is an island, entire of itself"

Sylvia Plath 17x 6.2% stumper $981 avg J:5 DJ:11 FJ:1

J $400 2006 This troubled poet, an alumna of Smith College, used the pseudonym Victoria Lucas

J $500 1999 "Crossing the Water" & "Winter Trees" are 2 posthumous collections by this "Bell Jar" author

J $1,000 2002 Anne Sexton was acquainted with & influenced by this fellow Massachusetts-born suicidal female poet

Ogden Nash 15x 20.0% stumper $867 avg J:1 DJ:14

DJ $400 2010 "Fleas": "Adam had 'em"

DJ $800 1995 He wrote the humorous verse "I don't mind eels except as meals"

DJ $1,000 1991 The humorist who wrote "Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man"

William Butler Yeats 15x 14.3% stumper $1,043 avg J:2 DJ:12 FJ:1

DJ $400 2001 Irish poet who rhymes with wooden boxes for packing

DJ $800 2001 1865-1939 IRY8S

DJ $1,000 1995 In a 1939 elegy W.H. Auden wrote of this man, "mad Ireland hurt you into poetry"

Dante 14x 14.3% stumper $600 avg J:4 DJ:10

J $200 2026 Boccaccio added the name "Divina" to the title of a work by this poet

J $500 1993 His first major work, "The New Life", written circa 1292, describes his love for Beatrice

DJ $1,200 2015 He had the ideas used in "The Divine Comedy" by around 1293 & took from about 1308 to 1320 to write it

Robert Browning 12x 50.0% stumper $950 avg J:1 DJ:11

DJ $200 1998 He began a correspondence with Elizabeth Barrett in 1845 & a year later they were married

J $800 2009 Remember your classes / His "Bells and Pomegranates" collection / Includes "Pippa Passes"

DJ $1,000 DD 2006 This British poet wrote, "That's my last duchess painted on the wall, looking as if she were alive"

Edna St. Vincent Millay 12x 58.3% stumper $1,367 avg J:2 DJ:10

DJ $200 1994 In her youth this poet who wrote of her candle burning at both ends was called Vincent

J $800 2024 In "First Fig" she wrote, "My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night"

J $1,000 2008 Beloved poet seen here

E.E. Cummings 12x $792 avg J:2 DJ:10

DJ $400 2020 "i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens... nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands"

DJ $800 2004 In 1953 his Norton Lectures at Harvard were published as "i: six nonlectures"

DJ $1,000 1996 The initials in the name of this poet stood for edward estlin

Geoffrey Chaucer 11x 27.3% stumper $573 avg J:2 DJ:9

DJ $400 2012 In the 1380s this English poetry pioneer dedicated his verse romance "Troilus and Criseyde" to fellow poet John Gower

DJ $800 2016 At the time of his death in October 1400, he was living in a leased house in the garden of Westminster Abbey

DJ $1,000 1995 Probably written around 1373, his "Saint Cecilia" later appeared as the "Second Nun's Tale"

Evangeline 10x 33.3% stumper $833 avg J:2 DJ:7 FJ:1

DJ $400 1993 This Longfellow poem begins, "This is the forest primeval"

DJ $500 DD 2000 This Longfellow poem is subtitled "A Tale of Acadie"

DJ $1,000 1998 Longfellow poem that begins in "The forest primeval" where "hemlocks… stand like Druids of eld"

Joyce Kilmer 9x 33.3% stumper $822 avg DJ:9

DJ $200 1996 In 1911 this "Trees" poet's first volume of verse, "Summer of Love" was published

DJ $600 1995 On July 30, 1918 this "Trees" author was killed while serving with the 165th Infantry near Seringes, France

DJ $1,600 2019 This "Trees" poet was born in New Brunswick & attended Rutgers

Annabel Lee 9x 22.2% stumper $1,022 avg DJ:9

DJ $200 1993 This Poe heroine "lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me"

DJ $800 2012 Poe wrote, "For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of" this beautiful maiden

DJ $1,000 1988 Child bride who ended up in "her tomb by the sounding sea"

Emma Lazarus 9x 33.3% stumper $1,633 avg J:1 DJ:5 FJ:3

DJ $600 1995 She died in 1887, before her "New Colossus" was placed on the Statue of Liberty

J $1,000 2024 Thispoet who wrote "The New Colossus" has been called one of the first successful Jewish-American authors

FJ 2020 This New York woman died in 1887, the year after the subject of her most famous poem was unveiled

William Blake 9x 33.3% stumper $1,022 avg DJ:9

DJ $400 2006 After his deafness had set in, British poet Algernon Swinburne wrote criticism of this "Tyger Tyger" poet

DJ $800 2011 "The Lamb" & "The Fly" are far from a mess / But this man's "The Tyger" / Gets all the good press

DJ $2,000 2008 A gravestone at Bunhill Fields says, "Near by lie the remains of the poet-painter" this man "1757-1827"

Rudyard Kipling 9x $700 avg J:2 DJ:7

DJ $400 2006 Some of this Bombay-born man's better-known poems are "Danny Deever" & "Mandalay"

J $600 2018 "If you can dream--and not make dreams your master; if you can think--and not make thoughts your aim"

DJ $1,000 1996 His 1892 work "Barrack-Room Ballads" included such poems as "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" & "Danny Deever"

Sappho 8x $747 avg J:1 DJ:7

DJ $200 1996 This Greek poet probably invented the sapphic, a 4-line stanza whose first 3 lines have 11 syllables

DJ $600 2001 This Greek lyric poetess created a verse form featuring 3 lines of 11 syllables & a fourth line of 5 syllables

DJ $1,000 1990 The story that this ancient Greek poetess drowned herself for love of Phaon is probably untrue

Paul Revere 8x $425 avg J:3 DJ:5

DJ $200 1996 Longfellow's poem about this patriot begins, "Listen, my children, and you shall hear..."

J $600 2016 When you write of an 18th c. hero like Longfellow did & end line 1 with "hear", it's a given this guy's name is coming up in line 2

J $200 1988 In the famous poem, he was "ready to ride & spread the alarm through every Middlesex village & farm"

Ezra Pound 8x 50.0% stumper $1,300 avg DJ:8

DJ $400 2001 1885-1972 USA16 OZ

DJ $600 1990 "Weighty" name of the pro-Fascist American poet who was declared insane in 1946

DJ $1,000 1998 In 1958 T.S. Eliot helped gain the release of this poet from a Washington mental institution

haiku 8x $1,112 avg J:1 DJ:7

J $200 2006 Japanese style /Always syllable counting /This type of poem

DJ $600 1995 Matsuo Basho is best known as the progenitor of the modern form of this 3-line poem

DJ $1,000 1990 3-line Japanese poem with 5 syllables in the first & third line, & 7 syllables in the second

Maya Angelou 8x 14.3% stumper $1,000 avg J:1 DJ:6 FJ:1

DJ $400 2007 "The caged bird sings / With a fearful trill / Of things unknown / But longed for still"

J $600 2014 Her: "Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise"

DJ $1,200 2016 (I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.) At Wake Forest University, I hold the presidential chair named for this author who delivered a poem at Bill Clinton's inauguration

Should-Know (54)

Dorothy Parker 7x $629 avg DJ:7

DJ $200 1994 The line "Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses" appeared in her poem "News Item"

DJ $800 2018 Her 1967 New York Times obituary called her a "poet, critic, sardonic humorist and literary wit"

DJ $1,600 2007 Born Dorothy Rothschild, this noted wit began her literary career with a poem published in Vanity Fair

Death 7x 14.3% stumper $686 avg DJ:7

DJ $200 1990 Completes the title of Alan Seeger's most famous poem, "I Have a Rendezvous with..."

DJ $600 1993 John Donne told this to "be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so"

DJ $1,200 2007 Shortly after writing "I Have a Rendezvous With" this, WWI poet Alan Seeger met it

Alfred Lord Tennyson 7x 16.7% stumper $700 avg DJ:6 FJ:1

DJ $200 2000 "The Coming of Arthur" & "Gareth and Lynette" are parts of his "Idylls of the King"

DJ $600 1986 He also wrote "The Charge of the Heavy Brigade"

DJ $1,000 2001 "Into the valley of death rode the six hundred"

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 7x 14.3% stumper $543 avg J:3 DJ:4

J $200 2024 Pt. II of this ends, "What evil looks had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the albatross about my neck was hung"

J $800 2021 In this 1798 poem a sailor laments, "With my cross-bow I shot the albatross"

DJ $1,600 2005 In this poem Coleridge penned, "He prayeth best who loveth best, all things both great and small"

W.H. Auden 7x 28.6% stumper $1,314 avg DJ:7

DJ $800 1995 The initials W.H. in this poet's name stood for Wystan Hugh

DJ $1,600 2010 The 1948 prize went to "The Age of Anxiety" by this poet, whose initials stood for Wystan Hugh

DJ $2,000 2007 "Funeral Blues" by this British poet begins, "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone"

Edmund Spenser 7x 14.3% stumper $943 avg J:1 DJ:6

DJ $400 1991 His castle was destroyed by fire in 1598 & much of "The Faerie Queene" may have gone up in smoke

DJ $800 1990 Queen Elizabeth I gave him a pension for life after he dedicated "The Faerie Queen" to her

DJ $1,000 1996 In 1589 Sir Walter Raleigh took this poet to London to publish the first 3 books of "The Faerie Queene"

Thomas Gray 7x 16.7% stumper $933 avg DJ:6 FJ:1

DJ $800 1996 He concluded "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" with "The Epitaph"; how appropriate

DJ $1,000 2001 In 1757 this "Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard" poet refused an appointment as Poet Laureate

FJ 1993 He was buried in a country churchyard in Buckinghamshire, England in 1771

Virgil 6x 16.7% stumper $2,033 avg J:1 DJ:5

DJ $600 1996 Emperor Augustus overturned this poet's request that his "Aeneid" be destroyed after his death

J $1,000 2006 "Love conquers all things; let us too surrender to love", wrote this epic poet around 39 B.C. in ancient Rome

DJ $800 2018 The first line of this ancient poet's "Aeneid" inspired George Bernard Shaw's play title "Arms and the Man"

Oliver Wendell Holmes 6x 83.3% stumper $983 avg J:2 DJ:4

J $500 1999 He wrote "Old Ironsides" while a law student

DJ $1,000 1989 "Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high..."

J $600 2013 He wrote about the USS Constitution, "The meteor of the ocean air shall sweep the clouds no more"

Hiawatha 6x 33.3% stumper $550 avg J:1 DJ:5

J $100 1999 He married Minnehaha, the "Loveliest of Dacotah Women"

DJ $800 2016 "The Song of" him includes the lines "by the shores of Gitche Gumee, by the shining big-sea-water"

DJ $1,200 2025 The vale of Tawasentha & the shore of Gitche Gumee are settings in the "Song of" him

daffodils 6x 50.0% stumper $867 avg DJ:6

DJ $400 1988 Wordsworth's poem on these flowers begins, "I wandered lonely as a cloud"

DJ $500 DD 1996 In "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", Wordsworth wrote about "A crowd, a host of golden" ones

DJ $1,500 DD 1993 These flowers are mentioned in the Wordsworth poem "I wandered lonely as a cloud"

a Grecian Urn 6x $1,983 avg J:1 DJ:5

DJ $400 1989 While looking at this piece of pottery, Keats concluded, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty"

DJ $800 1995 Keats called this piece of pottery a "Sylvan Historian"

J $1,500 DD 2024 The last stanza of John Keats' poem about this title object mentions its "Attic shape"

"The New Colossus" 6x 60.0% stumper $1,820 avg J:1 DJ:4 FJ:1

J $400 2008 This poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty begins, "Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame"

DJ $1,000 1997 Emma Lazarus is best known for this sonnet inscribed on the Statue of Liberty's base

FJ 2015 This 1883 poem says, "Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman..."

"Song of Myself" 6x 33.3% stumper $1,500 avg DJ:6

DJ $400 2015 Lines in this poem: "I celebrate myself" & "Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos"

DJ $600 1998 In the second edition of "Leaves Of Grass", this piece was titled "Poem of Walt Whitman, An American"

DJ $1,000 DD 1994 It's the longest poem in Walt Whitman's collection "Leaves of Grass"

James Whitcomb Riley 6x 50.0% stumper $900 avg DJ:6

DJ $600 1992 This Hoosier poet wrote his 1890 poem "The Raggedy Man" in Hoosier dialect

DJ $1,000 1993 Hoosier poet who wrote his 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie" in Hoosier dialect

DJ $1,000 1991 Author of "When the Frost is on the Punkin", this Hoosier poet liked to write in Indiana dialect

Byron 6x $983 avg J:1 DJ:5

DJ $400 1995 A woman in a spangled mourning dress inspired this lord's lines "She walks in beauty, like the night"

DJ $600 1993 "The Corsair", this lord's 1814 poem about a pirate, was widely rumored to be a self-portrait

DJ $1,600 2012 "Don Juan's parents lived beside the river, a noble stream, and call'd the Guadalquivir"

Abraham Lincoln 6x 16.7% stumper $450 avg J:2 DJ:4

DJ $200 1995 Vachel Lindsay wrote of this famous American, "sorrow for Anne Rutledge burned in his face"

J $500 1988 It's who Vachel Lindsay called "The Prairie Lawyer, Master of Us All"

DJ $1,000 DD 2000 Whitman's "When Lilies Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" was an elegy for this man

make a tree 6x $433 avg J:2 DJ:4

J $200 2024 Joyce Kilmer wrote, "I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as" this

J $600 2016 Joyce Kilmer's most famous work ends, "Poems are made by fools like me but only God can make" this

DJ $200 1985 Joyce Kilmer wrote, "Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can" do this

The Raven 5x $1,625 avg J:2 DJ:2 FJ:1

J $100 1999 This ebony bird was "Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door"

J $600 2017 When first seen, this title bird was "perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door"

DJ $5,600 DD 2024 The narrator asks this title bird to "leave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door!"

Ted Hughes 5x 20.0% stumper $1,760 avg DJ:5

DJ $1,000 DD 2016 Sylvia Plath encouraged him to enter his first book, "The Hawk in the Rain", into a contest & he won first prize

DJ $1,000 1994 His first volume of poems, "The Hawk in the Rain", was published the year he & Sylvia Plath moved to America

DJ $1,200 2017 His "Birthday Letters" is a collection of poems addressing wife Sylvia Plath over a period of 25 years

spring 5x $500 avg J:3 DJ:2

J $100 1991 Shelley asked, "O wind, if winter comes, can" this "be far behind?"

DJ $1,600 2006 Deaf poet Ronsard's poem to this season says, "The rose which but this morning did disclose her gown of crimson"

J $200 2025 Haru is this season, the time of sakura, & yuku haru is departing this, a traditional haiku theme

Rabbie Burns 5x 40.0% stumper $760 avg DJ:5

DJ $200 1988 Great Scot who wrote "To a Mouse", "To a Louse", & "To a Mountain Daisy"

DJ $600 1995 His cantata "The Jolly Beggars" includes the chorus "Sing hey my braw John Highlandman!"

DJ $1,400 DD 1984 Scottish poet who wrote the poem on which this song is based:

Lewis Carroll 5x $480 avg DJ:5

DJ $200 2001 "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe"

DJ $800 2012 "Beware the Jabberwock, my son!The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!"

DJ $200 1998 "So rested he by the tumtum tree, and stood awhile in thought" is a line from his "Jabberwocky"

Leaves of Grass 5x $620 avg J:1 DJ:4

J $100 1991 This Walt Whitman work began as a collection of 12 poems in 1855; by 1892 it contained hundreds

DJ $2,000 2021 "Song of Myself" is the longest & best known poem in this Walt Whitman collection first published in 1855

DJ $200 1994 "When I heard the learned astronomer" & "One's-Self I Sing" are from this 19th C. collection

hope 5x $700 avg J:1 DJ:3 FJ:1

DJ $200 1985 Alexander Pope wrote, it "springs eternal in the human breast"

DJ $600 1985 Cardinal virtue Emily Dickinson calls "the thing with feathers that perches in the soul"

J $1,000 2016 Emily Dickinson called it "the thing with feathers--that perches in the soul"

Edward Lear 5x 100.0% stumper $640 avg DJ:5

DJ $400 2015 "There was an old man in a tree, who was horribly bored by a bee"

DJ $800 2012 One of his many nonsense verses says, "On the top of the Crumpetty Tree the Quangle Wangle sat"

DJ $1,200 2007 "There was an old man with a beard, / Who said, 'It is just as I feared!'"

Alfred, Lord Tennyson 5x 75.0% stumper $1,125 avg J:1 DJ:3 FJ:1

J $100 1997 "Poems by 2 Brothers" features poems by 3 Tennyson brothers: Charles, Frederick & him

DJ $2,000 2010 This poet laureate's "Enoch Arden" sold 17,000 copies on its publication day in 1864

FJ 2022 At his 1892 burial, fit for a baron, the organist put music to his words, "I hope to see my Pilot face to face, when I have crost the bar"

"The Road Not Taken" 5x 40.0% stumper $1,620 avg DJ:5

DJ $800 1993 Robert Frost poem that begins, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood"

DJ $1,200 2016 In this Robert Frost poem, we are told that "two roads diverged in a yellow wood"

DJ $1,600 2006 This Robert Frost poem begins "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood"

"The Raven" 5x $520 avg DJ:5

DJ $200 1994 "Once Upon a Midnight Dreary", Edgar Allan Poe began this poem

DJ $1,200 2006 Poem containing the line "Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door"

DJ $400 2024 Words that rhyme in this poem include bore, shore, implore, Lenore & door, & there is at least one "-more"

"Old Ironsides" 5x 60.0% stumper $800 avg J:1 DJ:4

DJ $400 1991 Oliver Wendell Holmes began this poem, "Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high"

DJ $600 1996 Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote of this ship, "Oh better that her shattered hulk should sink beneath the wave"

J $1,000 DD 2018 Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote this poem as a call to help save the USS Constitution from demolition

"Casey at the Bat" 5x 20.0% stumper $820 avg J:2 DJ:3

J $100 1997 It begins, "It looked extremely rocky for the Mudville Nine that day"

DJ $800 2017 Ernest Lawrence Thayer got $5 for this baseball poem published in 1888

DJ $2,400 DD 2014 "10,000 eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt; 5,000 tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt"

poppies 5x $460 avg J:1 DJ:4

DJ $400 2024 In the first line of Canadian officer John McCrae's WWI poem "In Flanders Fields", we see these flowers "blow between the crosses"

DJ $800 2006 "In Flanders Fields" these flowers "blow/between the crosses, row on row"

DJ $400 1995 "In Flanders Fields" these "blow between the crosses, row on row"

a nightingale 5x $1,760 avg J:1 DJ:4

DJ $800 2015 Keats was inspired to write an ode to this bird by the song of one that nested in Charles Brown's garden

DJ $2,000 2011 Keats' ode to this bird ends, "Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:--do I wake or sleep?"

J $1,000 2017 John Keats called this bird immortal; "Thou wast not born for death"

the fog 5x $760 avg J:2 DJ:3

J $400 1991 In the words of Carl Sandburg, it "comes in on little cat feet"

J $600 2007 Carl Sandburg:"The Jeopardy! comes on little cat feet"

DJ $1,600 2015 In a poem by Carl Sandburg, it "comes on little cat feet"

the bells 5x 20.0% stumper $380 avg J:3 DJ:2

J $200 2020 A poem by Edgar Allan Poe mentions silver & golden these, jingling, tinkling, chiming

DJ $600 1996 About these Poe wrote, "Through the balmy air of night how they ring out their delight"

J $300 1988 Poe said of these, "What a horror they outpour on the bosom of the palpitating air!"

a couplet 5x $600 avg J:2 DJ:3

DJ $200 2000 2 consecutive lines that rhyme

J $800 2006 The "heroic" variety of this pair of rhyming lines is written in iambic pentameter

DJ $1,000 1995 It's the term for a pair of rhyming lines that may be closed, open or heroic

the night 5x $560 avg J:2 DJ:3

J $100 1988 According to Byron, "She walks in beauty like..." this

DJ $600 1992 In a poem of the same title, Dylan Thomas warned, "Do not go gentle into" this

DJ $1,600 2010 "Tyger! Tyger! burning bright in the forests of the ____"

the Civil War 5x $280 avg J:4 DJ:1

J $100 1999 Published in 1866, "Battle-Pieces" was Herman Melville's unappreciated book of poetry about this event

DJ $600 1992 When Walt Whitman's brother George was wounded during this war, Walt went to Va. to nurse him

J $400 1989 "Drum Taps" was Walt Whitman's collection of poems about this war

The Faerie Queene 4x 25.0% stumper $1,000 avg J:1 DJ:3

DJ $800 2006 Sir Calidore pursues the Blatant Beast in Book VI of this Spenser work

J $1,000 2022 Edmund Spenser coined the word "blatant" to describe a beast in this allegorical poem

DJ $1,000 1990 Belphoebe, representing Queen Elizabeth I, bathed with "roses red & violets blue" in this Spenser poem

Sir Walter Scott 4x 100.0% stumper $1,050 avg J:1 DJ:3

DJ $800 1994 Edinburgh-born poet & novelist who wrote the romantic 1808 poem "Marmion, a tale of Flodden Field"

J $1,000 DD 2008 British Romantics included Wordsworth in England &, north of the border, this "Lady of the Lake" author

DJ $800 1987 This Scottish author of "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" refused the post of poet laureate

rosebuds 4x $600 avg J:1 DJ:3

DJ $400 1992 The proverbial first line of a Robert Herrick poem says "Gather" these "while ye may"

DJ $600 1997 In a 1648 poem Robert Herrick urged reluctant maidens, "Gather ye" these "while ye may"

J $1,000 2006 Robert Herrick:"Gather ye Jeopardy! while ye may"

Richard Lovelace 4x 100.0% stumper $1,500 avg DJ:4

DJ $1,000 1998 He was actually in the slammer--London's Gatehouse, to be precise--when he wrote "To Althea, from Prison"

DJ $1,000 1993 Women he wrote poetry to include Amarantha, Lucasta & Althea

DJ $2,000 2003 In 1642 this English Cavalier poet was jailed for presenting a Royalist petition to Parliament

Minnehaha 4x $1,333 avg DJ:3 FJ:1

DJ $400 1985 In the Longfellow poem, her name means "laughing water"

DJ $1,600 2017 "The Song of Hiawatha" says, "From the water-fall he named her" this, "Laughing Water"

FJ 1995 In a famous poem, she's "the Arrow-maker's daughter...Hand somest of all the women"

Homer 4x $1,100 avg J:1 DJ:3

J $200 2008 Some believe this epic poet was born in Ionia in the 9th century B.C.

DJ $2,000 DD 2004 Writing about this ancient author, Keats mused, "There is a triple sight in blindness keen"

DJ $200 1998 The title of the epic "Omeros" by Caribbean-born Derek Walcott is the Greek name of this poet

Gunga Din 4x $533 avg DJ:3 FJ:1

DJ $200 1993 Kipling called this regimental water-carrier "The finest man I knew"

DJ $1,200 2005 "'E'll be squattin' on the coals givin' drink to pore damned souls, an' I'll get a swig in hell from" this Kipling character

FJ 1990 The last words spoken by this title character were "I 'ope you liked your drink"

Chicago 4x $250 avg DJ:4

DJ $200 1993 In a 1916 poem Carl Sandburg called this city "tool maker, stacker of wheat"

DJ $200 1993 In a Carl Sandburg poem, this city is called "the nation's freight handler"

DJ $200 1992 Carl Sandburg said of this city, "They tell me you are wicked and I believe them"

beauty 4x 25.0% stumper $800 avg J:1 DJ:3

J $200 2007 John Keats:"A thing of Jeopardy! is a joy forever"

DJ $800 2021 George Herbert's poetic query "Is there in truth no" this? became the title of the "Star Trek" episode with the Medusans

DJ $2,000 2022 Byron: "She walks in ____, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies"

an ode 4x $800 avg J:1 DJ:3

J $400 2008 Keats wrote this kind of serious poem "On Melancholy"

DJ $1,200 2022 "To beauty" by Emerson

DJ $400 2008 Pindar was famous for this 3-letter type of poem

Amy Lowell 4x 50.0% stumper $950 avg DJ:4

DJ $800 1998 A bit of an eccentric, this poet & sister of astronomer Percival was often seen smoking cigars

DJ $1,000 DD 2000 This leader of the Imagist school was the sister of the famous astronomer who predicted the existence of Pluto

DJ $800 1990 She was so active in the Imagism movement that Ezra Pound called it "Amy-gism"

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" 4x 25.0% stumper $1,050 avg DJ:4

DJ $600 1987 "Do I dare to eat a peach?" asked T.S. Eliot in this "Love Song"

DJ $2,000 2014 "Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table"

DJ $800 2010 Ezra Pound called this "love" poem by T.S. Eliot "the best poem I have yet had or seen from an American"

"The Charge of the Light Brigade" 4x $975 avg DJ:4

DJ $400 2014 "Noble six hundred!" ends this poem

DJ $800 2003 Poem that contains the line "All in the valley of death rode the six hundred"

DJ $1,200 2017 This Tennyson poem begins, "Half a league, half a league, half a league onward"

Poet Laureate 4x $600 avg J:1 DJ:3

DJ $400 2010 In May 2009 Carol Ann Duffy became the first woman in history appointed to this U.K. post

J $800 2016 In 1668 John Dryden became the first person to officially hold this royal writing position

DJ $400 1992 The noted actor & playwright Colley Cibber was appointed to this poetic office in 1730

a limerick 4x $350 avg DJ:4

DJ $400 2022 "There was a young lady of Norway"

DJ $400 2016 This type of humorous verse shares its name with an Irish city

DJ $200 1985 1 of them begins, "There once was a man from Kent"

Heart 4x 25.0% stumper $300 avg J:2 DJ:2

DJ $400 1993 "The night has a thousand eyes, the day but one...the mind has a thousand eyes, and" this organ "but one"

DJ $200 1991 A.E. Housman heard a wise man say, "Give crowns and pounds and guineas but not" this "away"

J $200 1998 Wordsworth wrote, "My" this "leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky"

Worth Knowing (94)

Xanadu 3 wine 3 William Jennings Bryan 3 Westminster Abbey 3 The Rape of the Lock 3 the Hesperus 3 the Brooklyn Bridge 3 the Ancient Mariner 3 snow 3 rise 3 Prometheus 3 Paradise Lost 3 Pablo Neruda 3 Omar Khayyam 3 my soul 3 Michelangelo 3 Let me count the ways 3 J. Alfred Prufrock 3 Edgar Lee Masters 3 Beowulf 3 April 3 Ann Rutledge 3 an elegy 3 Alice Walker 3 a sonnet 3 a rainbow 3 "Trees" 3 "The female of the species" 3 "The Bells" 3 "Mending Wall" 3 "Annabel Lee" 3 "America The Beautiful" 3 meter 3 the U.S.S. Constitution ("Old Ironsides") 3 Welsh 2 Wall 2 the world 2 the Walrus & the Carpenter 2 the Odyssey 2 the Lowells 2 the Library of Congress 2 The Lady of Shalott 2 the kraken 2 The Courtship of Miles Standish 2 the caged bird 2 the Afton 2 tears 2 success 2 Stevie Smith 2 Robert Penn Warren 2 Robert Louis Stevenson 2 refrain 2 pop 2 Poets' Corner 2 Petrarch 2 Percy Bysshe Shelley 2 Orlando 2 New York 2 nevermore 2 Laura 2 Lady Godiva 2 John Greenleaf Whittier 2 Joan of Arc 2 Japan 2 Italy 2 Herman Melville 2 Gwendolyn Brooks 2 Guinevere 2 Greece 2 Good neighbors 2 gold 2 Frost's costs 2 Elizabeth (Barrett) Browning 2 Dying 2 Don Juan 2 Charles Baudelaire 2 Casey at the Bat 2 Casey 2 cantos 2 buzz 2 an epitaph 2 a joy forever 2 a home 2 a candle 2 a cage 2 "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" 2 "Jabberwocky" 2 "If" 2 "Howl" 2 "Dover Beach" 2 the tiger 2 the French Revolution 2 the Pied Piper 2 Shel Silverstein 2

Other

25 answers | 66 clues

Must-Know (1)

Alexander Pope 11x 18.2% stumper $1,055 avg J:1 DJ:10

J $400 2018 "'Restore the lock!' she cries; and all around 'Restore the lock!' the vaulted roofs rebound"

DJ $800 1994 In 1712 he published his first version of "The Rape of the Lock"

DJ $1,600 2002 In "An Essay on Man", he wrote "Hope springs eternal in the human breast"

Should-Know (1)

Richard Cory 4x $1,150 avg J:1 DJ:3

J $600 2008 "One calm summer night", this title character "went home and put a bullet through his head

DJ $1,000 2000 "One calm summer night" this title character "went home and put a bullet through his head"

DJ $1,000 DD 1991 Edwin Arlington Robinson character who "one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head"

Worth Knowing (23)

the Owl & the Pussycat 3 love 3 lamb 3 honor 3 albatross 3 there's no place like home 2 the wind 2 Old Ironsides 2 Mudville 2 money 2 little cat feet 2 Kublai Khan 2 Kissed Me 2 June 2 It Might Have Been 2 hell 2 deferred 2 calico 2 Boston 2 assonance 2 William Carlos Williams 2 Tyger Tyger 2 The Spoon River Anthology 2

Shakespeare

5 answers | 50 clues

Must-Know (3)

John Milton 17x 23.5% stumper $765 avg J:4 DJ:13

J $200 2022 Annotations on a First Folio of Shakespeare were found to be in the handwriting of this "Paradise Lost" poet

DJ $600 1998 He completed a sonnet "On His Blindness" circa 1655 & one "On His Deceased Wife" in 1658

DJ $1,000 1990 "They also serve who only stand and wait" is the last line of this poet's "On His Blindness"

William Shakespeare 12x 9.1% stumper $618 avg J:1 DJ:10 FJ:1

J $200 1999 In 1630 John Milton wrote a sonnet honoring this other famous sonneteer

DJ $600 1991 One of his sonnets begins, "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"

DJ $1,000 1990 Author of "Take, O Take Those Lips Away", "Hark. Hark! the Lark!" & "Shall I Compare Thee"

Langston Hughes 11x 44.4% stumper $1,311 avg J:2 DJ:7 FJ:2

J $600 2022 Poems by him include "Harlem", "Crossing Jordan" & "The Weary Blues"

DJ $1,000 1999 Harlem poet who wrote "Rest at pale evening... a tall slim tree... night coming tenderly black like me"

FJ 1997 He had already published "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" when Vachel Lindsay discovered him busing tables

Should-Know (1)

Ben Jonson 7x 28.6% stumper $1,614 avg DJ:7

DJ $600 1992 Sir John Suckling was one of the "Sons of Ben", 17th C. poets who considered this Ben their literary father

DJ $1,600 2003 "We will eat our mullets, soused in wines" & "sup pheasants' eggs", this Elizabethan dramatist wrote in "The Alchemist"

DJ $800 1989 One of England's 1st poets laureate, he wrote to Celia, "Drink to me only with thine eyes"

Worth Knowing (1)

Sonnets 3

American Literature

2 answers | 7 clues

Should-Know (1)

Ralph Waldo Emerson 5x 100.0% stumper $1,000 avg J:2 DJ:2 FJ:1

DJ $800 1991 The author of "The Concord Hymn", who immortalized "The shot heard round the world"

J $1,000 2018 He wrote "Concord Hymn" for the dedication of a monument commemorating the 1775 battle

FJ 1994 On his death, April 27, 1882, the church bells of Concord, Mass. tolled 79 times in his memory

Worth Knowing (1)

a star 2

Children's Literature

1 answers | 4 clues

Should-Know (1)

the Canterbury Tales 4x $450 avg J:1 DJ:3

J $200 2023 You want tales? Oh, we got some tales to tell! "The Clerk's", "The Manciple's", "The Reeve's"... all part of this

DJ $600 1993 The prologue to this 14th c. work describes the over 2 dozen people who meet at the Tabard Inn

DJ $200 1996 Of the 31 pilgrims in this Chaucer work, only 23 tell their stories

British Literature

2 answers | 4 clues

Worth Knowing (2)

Samson 2 Mandalay 2

Start Studying Poetry
« Back to Poetry overview