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On September 26, 1888, TS Eliot was born. This quiz is on poems and poets. In honour of the first manned spacecraft on the moon, Apollo XI, we have decided to have 11 questions this week.
1. These are the first lines of the last chapter of which classic work of literature? The poem spells the person to whom the book is dedicated in an acrostic.
A boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July …
2. Which perfectly innocent-sounding nursery rhyme is believed to owe its origin to an English queen who was known for prosecuting Protestants? The rhyme refers to the growing number of graveyards for her Protestant victims.
3. ‘Singhasan khaali karo ke janata aati hai’ became the rallying call of the anti-Emergency movement after Jayaprakash Narayan quoted it at a rally at Ramlila Maidan. Who wrote the poem which featured this line?
4. Which famous poet and songwriter worked for All India Radio in the late ’30s and ’40s, and was also the music director for the film adaptation of Tagore’s novel Gora?
5. ‘Ajj akhan Waris Shah nu,’ is probably Amrita Pritam’s most famous work on the Partition where the poet wants to question Waris Shah about the madness around her. For which classic work of Punjabi literature is Waris Shah remembered?
6. Which talented poet and polymath started off as the court poet of the Raja of Ettayapuram in 1901, and later taught in a school in Madurai before a short but memorable career in poetry, social reform and the freedom struggle?
7. Joel and Ethan Coen’s classic comedy O Brother Where Art Thou is loosely structured on which epic poem?
8. Which classic poem was written after poet William Henley’s leg was saved from amputation by the distinguished scientist Joseph Lister?
9. If it was Maya Angelou in 1997, Miller Williams in 2009 and Elizabeth Alexander in 2013, who was it in 1961?
10. The 1994 Italian film Il Postino featured which real-life poet in its story and had translations of his poems set to music on the soundtrack?
11. The Ogden Nash poem ‘Reflections on Ice-Breaking’ is one of the few poems where the title has just five letters less than the actual poem. The poem?
Answers
1. Through the Looking Glass; they spell out the name Alice Pleasance Liddell
2. ‘Mary, Mary Quite Contrary’
3. Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’
4. Kazi Nazrul Islam, the national poet of Bangladesh
5. He is regarded the author of the legend of Heer Ranjha
6. Chinnaswami Subramania Bharati
7. Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’
8. ‘Invictus’. The last lines, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul,” were inspiration to the likes of Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi
9. Robert Frost. They all read their poems at Presidential inaugurals. Frost read his poem ‘The Gift Outright’ when John F Kennedy was sworn in as President
10. Pablo Neruda
11. Candy is Dandy, But Liquor is Quicker. Nash later added a third line in the ’70s — ‘pot is not’
Joy Bhattacharjya is a quizmaster and Project Director, FIFA U-17 World Cup
Follow Joy on Twitter @joybhattacharj
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