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Which Caribbean poet wrote the seminal book-length poem Notebook of a Return to the Native Land?
This is the Martinican writer Aimé Césaire, an important founder of négritude in French-language literature. Césaire’s work also includes plays such as A Tempest (based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest) and critical essays such as Discourse on Colonialism. Notebook of a Return to the Native Land was first published in 1939 in France.
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What is contemporary Japanese poetry called?
All of these terms except “gendai-shi” refer to older, more traditional forms of Japanese poetry.
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Which of the following works is by Russian poet Osip Mandelstam?
“The Lady with the Dog” is by Anton Chekhov, “The Overcoat” is by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Notes from the Underground is by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Pale Fire is by Vladimir Nabokov.
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Which Latin American poet wrote odes to age, ironing, socks, tomatoes, and birdwatching?
This is the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.
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Nobel Prize-winning Mexican poet Octavio Paz wrote which of the following works?
Only The Labyrinth of Solitude is by Octavio Paz. The other works are all novels by Mexican writer Gabriel Garcia Márquez.
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Peruvian poet César Vallejo wrote which of the following works?
Only Los Heraldos Negros is by Vallejo. The rest are works by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.
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Which Latin American poet wrote the collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair?
This is Pablo Neruda. He employed a variety of poetic forms, including love poetry, epics, historical works, autobiography and political manifestos.
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Which of the following works of ancient Greek poetry was written by Hesiod?
Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet who lived and wrote around the same time as Homer. His best known works of poetry are Theogeny, Works and Days, and Shield of Heracles. Works and Days is centered on a body of agrarian advice and a farmer’s almanac in which the speaker instructs his brother Perses in farming.
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What is the name of the Mesopotamian epic poem that is often considered the first great work of literature?
Written more than 4,000 years ago, The Epic of Gilgamesh discusses the works of Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, and the wild man Enkidu. It was written on clay tablets and exists today in various forms, including the Old Babylonian version and the Akkadian version.
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Which Nobel Prize-winning Eastern European poet wrote Elegy for John Donne and Other Poems, On Grief and Reason, and To Urania?
This is the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, who was forced to emigrate from the Soviet Union to the United States in the 1970s. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987 and was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States in 1991.
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The Jamaican poet Jean “Binta” Breeze wrote all of the following except which collection of poetry?
Sea Grapes is a 1976 poetry collection by Derek Walcott.
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Which Nobel Prize-winning Caribbean poet wrote Omeros, a contemporary Caribbean epic poem that loosely reimagines Homer’s Iliad?
This is the St. Lucian poet Derek Walcott, an important post-colonial writer. Omeros was published in 1990 and contains characters with mythical names such as Achille, Hector, and Helen, although the work itself is set primarily in modern-day St. Lucia.
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Which major Caribbean poet wrote The Arrivants, Middle Passages, and Born to Slow Horses?
This is Kamau Brathwaite, a Barbados-born poet and author of critical works such as History of the Voice and The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica.
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Which Nobel Prize-winning Eastern European poet wrote The World, City Without a Name, and The Unencompassed Earth?
This is the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz, who is also known for his nonfiction book denouncing Stalin titled The Captive Mind. Miłosz was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1980.
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I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.
Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold.
We will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver.
While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof.
A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.
My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi.
Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes.
Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green.
The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir.
The above text is taken from which book of the Bible?
This text is taken from the famous Song of Solomon or Song of Songs, also known as the Canticles. This version is from the King James Bible.
Passage adapted from Song of Solomon 1.9-17 in the Oxford Standard King James Bible
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Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The above text is taken from which book of the Bible?
This passage is from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes and is one of the most famous Old Testament verses. Ecclesiastes is a work that many modern and contemporary writers allude to or even title their work after (e.g. Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises). The version here is taken from the King James edition of the Bible.
Adapted from Ecclesiastes 1.2-5 in the Oxford Standard King James Bible
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MEPHISTOPHELES:
Since Thou, O Lord, deign'st to approach again
And ask us how we do, in manner kindest,
And heretofore to meet myself wert fain,
Among Thy menials, now, my face Thou findest.
Pardon, this troop I cannot follow after
With lofty speech, though by them scorned and spurned:
My pathos certainly would move Thy laughter,
If Thou hadst not all merriment unlearned.
Of suns and worlds I've nothing to be quoted;
How men torment themselves, is all I've noted.
The little god o' the world sticks to the same old way,
And is as whimsical as on Creation's day.
Life somewhat better might content him,
But for the gleam of heavenly light which Thou hast lent him:
He calls it Reason—thence his power's increased,
To be far beastlier than any beast.
Saving Thy Gracious Presence, he to me
A long-legged grasshopper appears to be,
That springing flies, and flying springs,
And in the grass the same old ditty sings.
Would he still lay among the grass he grows in!
Each bit of dung he seeks, to stick his nose in.
Who wrote the above work?
This text is taken from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1808 tragedy Faust. One of the most famous characters from this work is Mephistopheles, the devil with whom the eponymous protagonist Faust makes a dangerous bargain. Christopher Marlowe’s earlier play, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, also contains the character Mephistopheles, but the play's diction and syntax are much more antiquated, as Marlowe’s work was written in 1592.
Adapted from Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1808; trans. Taylor 1890)
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When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart changed,—and rising one morning with the rosy dawn, he went before the sun, and spake thus unto it:
Thou great star! What would be thy happiness if thou hadst not those for whom thou shinest!
For ten years hast thou climbed hither unto my cave: thou wouldst have wearied of thy light and of the journey, had it not been for me, mine eagle, and my serpent.
But we awaited thee every morning, took from thee thine overflow and blessed thee for it.
Lo! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that hath gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it.
I would fain bestow and distribute, until the wise have once more become joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches.
Therefore must I descend into the deep: as thou doest in the evening, when thou goest behind the sea, and givest light also to the nether-world, thou exuberant star!
Like thee must I go down, as men say, to whom I shall descend.
Bless me, then, thou tranquil eye, that canst behold even the greatest happiness without envy!
Bless the cup that is about to overflow, that the water may flow golden out of it, and carry everywhere the reflection of thy bliss!
Lo! This cup is again going to empty itself, and Zarathustra is again going to be a man.
Thus began Zarathustra's down-going.
Who wrote the above lines?
This excerpt is taken from the prologue to Friedrich Nietzsche’s 1883 Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book For All and None. The work is highly philosophical and introduces concepts such as eternal recurrence and the Übermensch, or “Overman.”
Passage adapted from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book For All and None by Fredrich Nietzche (1883; trans. Common 1909)
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As I was going down impassive Rivers,
I no longer felt myself guided by haulers:
Yelping redskins had taken them as targets
And had nailed them naked to colored stakes.
I was indifferent to all crews,
The bearer of Flemish wheat or English cottons
When with my haulers this uproar stopped
The Rivers let me go where I wanted.
Into the furious lashing of the tides
More heedless than children's brains the other winter
I ran! And loosened Peninsulas
Have not undergone a more triumphant hubbub
The storm blessed my sea vigils
Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves
That are called eternal rollers of victims,
Ten nights, without missing the stupid eye of the lighthouses!
Who is the author of this poem?
These lines come from the opening of "The Drunken Boat,” one of Arthur Rimbaud’s most famous poems. Written in 1871, the poem was lauded as an avant-garde work for its vivid, often unsettling imagery and its fragmentary first-person narrative.
Passage adapted from "The Drunken Boat" by Arthur Rimbaud (1871)
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Artisans, raise high the roof beam!
Tall is the bridegroom as Ares,
Taller by far than the tallest,
O Hymenæus!
Ay! towering over his fellows,
As over men of all other
Lands towers the Lesbian singer,
O Hymenæus!
Well-favored, too, is the maiden,
Eyes that are sweeter than honey,
Fair both in face and in figure,
O Hymenæus!
Based on the content of this poem, who is the likely author?
The key to this question is the mention of the singer from the island of Lesbos, which was the Greek poet Sappho’s birthplace. Sappho was a lyric poet who lived during the 600s BCE. Much of her poetry, which is characterized by the Sapphic stanza seen above, has been lost or exists only in fragments today.
Passage adapted from "Hymenaios" in The Poems of Sappho: An Interpretative Rendition Into English translated by John Myers O'Hara (1910)
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