Poetry – does the mere mention of it transport you back to the classroom and the type of lessons where the whole class were forced to study the same poem; delving into the wording and trying to unravel exactly what the poet meant? Perhaps you were fortunate enough to have the type of teacher who brought poetry to life for you; making the written words truly come alive for the whole class and capturing everyone’s imagination? Or did you have the misfortune to be in one of those classes where you recited the poem as a group, or worse still each person took a line each and it was really hard to get a proper sense of emotion from the piece? If your school days were quite a while ago then there is a good chance you remember very little, if any, of the poetry you studied at school.
How much of your poetic education have you retained?
Maybe you were one of the lucky ones who loved poetry at school, and you took that love further into higher education. Or perhaps you love nothing better to curl up with a good book, and a warm drink in the evenings and your book of choice is a poetry book. Poetry is all around us in our day to day life, whether we remember half uttered lines that we should have been studying at school or we have caught snippets on the television we have probably retained more than we actually realize.
For some people poetry is a fantastic way to escape and lose themselves in the written word, maybe even write a poem or two of their own, however just because they love poetry doesn’t necessarily mean that they know lots about poets and even poetry in general. As with literature there are so many different genres of poetry and people tend to have their own preferences, so not everyone who loves poetry is an expert.
You may be surprised at your results!
So, can you tell your Keats from your Whitman, your Blake from your Wordsworth or is the world of poetry just one big mystery to you? If you love poetry, and think you know all there is to know, and even if you don’t, then why not test yourself and see just how much you do know in this quiz! Are you top of the class or do you need to go back to school – or read a little more of our site – to brush up on some poetry?
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