Free Poetry MCQs with Answers

• A. African mythology.
• B. African American folktale.
• C. Greek mythology.
• D. Contemporary female artists.Get Language Courses

Explanation: Lorde connects the modern setting of 125th Street with Abomey, an important African historical and cultural site, and invokes African…

• A. They showed that a hero would deliver them from slavery.
• B. They gave hope that God would deliver them from slavery.
• C. They helped them do their work faster.
• D. They were based on African songs.

Explanation: Spirituals such as "Go Down, Moses" gave enslaved African Americans religious hope that God would bring liberation, just as Moses led the…

• A. The name of a restaurant the pool players cannot enter.
• B. A metaphor for colossal lies they have been buried with.
• C. A metaphor for the pool players who are trying to dig out of their neighborhood.
• D. The name of a pool hall.

Explanation: The Golden Shovel is the name of the pool hall in Brooks’s poem, where the young players spend their time.

• A. The poem's form of rhymed tetrameter couplets.
• B. The poem shows her future work as a advocate of civil rights.
• C. The poem is filled with Christian symbolism.
• D. The fact that the poem is the most accurate account of the 1742 Indian-White engagement in Deerfield, Massachusetts.

Explanation: “Bars Fight” records the 1742 conflict between Native Americans and white settlers near Deerfield, Massachusetts, and is valued as an…

• A. A child dying of SIDS.
• B. The stillborn death of a child.
• C. Abortion.
• D. A murdered child.

Explanation: Clifton’s poem addresses the speaker’s decision to end a pregnancy and the guilt and grief associated with it.

• A. Toasting is oral
• B. Toasting is a male event
• C. Toasting glorifies women
• D. Toasting provides cultural identificationSupport Black Businesses

Explanation: African American toasts are oral performances, traditionally associated with male gatherings, and they reinforce cultural identity.

• A. A Modernist poet
• B. A performance poet
• C. A classical poet
• D. A traditional poetRead Classic Poetry

Explanation: Sekou Sundiata is identified with performance poetry because his work was created for live presentation and combines spoken language…

• A. The poem's rhythmic lines.
• B. The references to jazz songs and musicians.
• C. The poem can be set to music.
• D. There is repetition.

Explanation: The poem's jazz quality comes primarily from its rhythmic, syncopated lines, which imitate the movement and improvisational energy of…

• A. Alice Walker
• B. Etheridge Knight
• C. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• D. Langston Hughes

Explanation: Langston Hughes wrote “Harlem,” whose opening asks, “What happens to a dream deferred?” The deferred dream becomes an image of frustrated…

• A. To help the other inmates escape.
• B. To win money by fighting.
• C. To do what the other inmates were afraid to do.
• D. To keep the Blacks and Whites separated.Support Black Businesses

Explanation: Hard Rock functions as the inmate who confronts authority and does what the other prisoners fear to do, making him a symbol of resistance.

• A. Negro spirituals being sung in the cotton fields.
• B. The call and response of an African American church congregation.
• C. African American toasting on a city street corner.
• D. Blues being played in a Harlem bar.African-Americans

Explanation: The narrator hears a blues pianist singing on Lenox Avenue in Harlem, creating the setting of an urban bar or club performance.

• A. The persona that the characters show the world.
• B. The carved masks of African gods.
• C. Characters from the Bible.
• D. Who the narrator wishes to be.

Explanation: The mask symbolizes the outward persona Black people present to a hostile society while concealing pain and suffering.

• A. Dover Beach
• B. My last Duchess
• C. The Eve of St. Agnes
• D. The Lotus Eaters

Explanation: The *Lotus Eaters* is a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, based on an episode from Homer's *Odyssey*.

• A. W.B. Yeats
• B. L. Tolstoy
• C. A. Pope
• D. H.G. Wells

Explanation: W. B. Yeats was a major Irish poet and dramatist, and a leading figure of the Irish Literary Revival.

• A. Coleridge
• B. Blake
• C. Shelley
• D. None of these

Explanation: The Excursion is a long philosophical poem by William Wordsworth, published in 1814.

• A. Tennyson
• B. Byron
• C. Southey
• D. Wordsworth

Explanation: Robert Southey became Poet Laureate in 1813, succeeding Henry James Pye. Tennyson held the office later, from 1850 until 1892.

• A. Wordsworth
• B. Coleridge
• C. Shelley
• D. None of these

Explanation: Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote The Revolt of Islam, a narrative poem first published in 1818.

• A. The Idylls of the kings
• B. Charge of the Light Brigade
• C. In Memoriam
• D. None of these

Explanation: Queen Victoria greatly admired In Memoriam, Tennyson’s elegy for Arthur Hallam, and found comfort in it after Prince Albert’s death.

• A. his love of poetry
• B. his love of ancient cultures
• C. his love of Greek culture and art
• D. None of these

Explanation: Keats’s Hellenism means his deep attraction to Greek culture, mythology, beauty, and art.

• A. on a mountain
• B. beside a river
• C. in a desert
• D. in a valley

Explanation: In Shelley’s poem, the broken statue stands amid “lone and level sands” in a vast desert.