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Quiz about Bad Pickup Lines Poetry Edition
Quiz about Bad Pickup Lines Poetry Edition

Bad Pickup Lines: Poetry Edition Quiz


I'm trying to imitate love poetry of some of the greatest poets of history, but for some reason, something's not going right. Can you still identify through substance and style which poets might have penned these lines?

A multiple-choice quiz by adams627. Estimated time: 6 mins.
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Author
adams627
Time
6 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
353,948
Updated
Dec 03 21
# Qns
10
Difficulty
Average
Avg Score
7 / 10
Plays
708
Awards
Editor's Choice
Last 3 plays: i-a-n (2/10), misstified (9/10), Snoozan (5/10).
Question 1 of 10
1. Which American poet, also known for his short stories, wrote a touching love poem that goes something like the following?

It was many and many a year ago
In a kingdom by the sea
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
And whose hotness you could probably see

But one day the wind blew and she caught a cold
And her hotness died soon after
And thus was the end of my maiden gold
And now there's nevermore any more laughter.
Hint


Question 2 of 10
2. Which author's terza rima is usually a bit more elegant than the sample love poem that I've reproduced below?

I love you my dear so much
And not just because you are so hot
Though that is true as such

But your love has got me caught
Since we first met that Easter Sunday
Of you alone have I ever thought

Lead me to heaven you may some day
Although your warmth may feel as hot as an inferno
Eventually I'll recount it in some lay

And before then Beatrice, remember I will go
To meet you in Paradiso!
Hint


Question 3 of 10
3. If two were ever one, then surely we.
If ever man were hot, then surely thee.
If ever wife was happy with a man,
Then compare to us no others can.
I prize thy hotness above all others
Each day my resistance it smothers
Then while we live, in love, let's persevere
And your looks shall my life now steer.

Which inhabitant of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1600s wrote substantially better poems than what I've created above?
Hint


Question 4 of 10
4. Which Victorian poet's most famous work ends with a slightly more artistic flourish than the cheap love poetry reproduced below?

And it is you, alone, who lights my darkling plain
You are unbelievably, outrageously hot, and that in spite
Of any ignorant armies who clash by night.
Hint


Question 5 of 10
5. Which modern American poet undoubtedly could have penned the following lines of love poetry?

i carry your hot heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go my dear; and wherever you are i follow because
You're so unbelievably hot) i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
Hint


Question 6 of 10
6. Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, would be no crime
As it is, dear, your hotness does make
This coyness a grand mistake
My vegetable love does grow
As I hear time's winged chariot slow
Let us roll our sweetness into a ball
And your hotness shall please us all

Which 17th-century British poet offered a much more convincing show of his love (and lust) in "To His Coy Mistress" than what I've provided above?
Hint


Question 7 of 10
7. Let us go then, you and I
When the evening is spread out against the sky
While there is still time
For a hundred indecisions-
(You are smoking hot)
While the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo
Oh! It is impossible to say what I mean!
Do I dare to eat a peach? I'm no Prince Hamlet!
I was not born for this life-
I cannot speak it! I cannot!
I do not think you will sing to me.
(Even though you're super-duper hot)
Now I hear the mermaids singing, each to each
The eternal footman watching as I say,
"That is not what I meant, at all".
(What I meant to say is that you are hot.)

Which 20th century author created a speaker whose title "Love Song" sadly fails to make any of those parenthetical references to a woman's hotness?
Hint


Question 8 of 10
8. It would be rather tedious to go through the entire poem, but who might have written her best-known poem to husband Robert in the far less melodious version below?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
Way one: You are so hot, and that is great
Way two: You are so hot, and hold my gaze
Way three: You are so hot, as though it's fate
Hint


Question 9 of 10
9. For god's sake hold your tongue and let me love
Speak and your hotness shall lose what I speak of
As virtuous men pass mildly away
There remains only this left to say
Thy hot turning makes my circle just
I say this not out of lust
But since this is a metaphysical poem
My meanings, you'll never just quite know 'em.

Which English author's collected works could accurately be summarized in the crude love poem above?
Hint


Question 10 of 10
10. Which acclaimed poet and playwright might have written these lines?

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely, and much more hot
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
But only cheat the beauty they you taught
And never bright your eyes upon me shine
But that I think how hot thou truly are
And will that warmth will ever be to mine
As light from our solar-powered star
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest
For physics students know the law once made
That energy's conserved and never goest
And thus this poem ends in one more line
And thou are hot, my dear, it's truly fine.

Answer: (One Word (last name), or Two Words (first and last))

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Most Recent Scores
Mar 04 2024 : i-a-n: 2/10
Feb 03 2024 : misstified: 9/10
Jan 30 2024 : Snoozan: 5/10

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quiz
Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. Which American poet, also known for his short stories, wrote a touching love poem that goes something like the following? It was many and many a year ago In a kingdom by the sea That a maiden there lived whom you may know And whose hotness you could probably see But one day the wind blew and she caught a cold And her hotness died soon after And thus was the end of my maiden gold And now there's nevermore any more laughter.

Answer: Edgar Allan Poe

In his influential essay "The Philosophy of Composition", Edgar Allan Poe proclaimed that the death of a beautiful woman is the most beautiful topic in the world. Small wonder, then, that some of his best-known poetry, including "Annabel Lee" (reproduced above in modified forn) and "The Raven" are told by a speaker who has just experienced the death of a lover. For all his scary short stories and heart-aching love poetry, Poe was also an important literary critic. In "The Poetic Principle", the Baltimore native rejected the ideas of the Fireside authors and their narrative poetic epics. Similarly, he explained the idea of a "unity of effect" present in a poem or story, which restricts the length of reading to a single sitting so that the reader can comprehend the whole work in one go.

Poe only ever wrote one novel, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket", which was published anonymously, preferring to make a name for himself with shorter works.
2. Which author's terza rima is usually a bit more elegant than the sample love poem that I've reproduced below? I love you my dear so much And not just because you are so hot Though that is true as such But your love has got me caught Since we first met that Easter Sunday Of you alone have I ever thought Lead me to heaven you may some day Although your warmth may feel as hot as an inferno Eventually I'll recount it in some lay And before then Beatrice, remember I will go To meet you in Paradiso!

Answer: Dante

For good reason, the terza rima style is inextricably linked to Dante, who used it throughout his masterpiece "Divine Comedy", itself composed of three parts ("Inferno", "Purgatorio", and "Paradiso"). The style uses an interlocking rhyme scheme ABA BCB CDC DED, and although it has been applied since (notably, by Percy Shelley and Robert Frost), the origin lies with the Florentine master. Literary critics say that the rhyme scheme propels the narrative along, tercet-by-tercet, as Dante progresses deeper and deeper into hell.

The terza rima also proposes additional challenges for translators, since it is not an easy form to mimic while safeguarding meaning. The original "Divine Comedy" was written in Italian (not Latin, which was a pretty big deal for the 14th century). Some translators of the epic, like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, didn't even try to imitate it. Definitive translations into English maintaining Dante's meter include versions by Dorothy Sayers and Robert Pinsky.
3. If two were ever one, then surely we. If ever man were hot, then surely thee. If ever wife was happy with a man, Then compare to us no others can. I prize thy hotness above all others Each day my resistance it smothers Then while we live, in love, let's persevere And your looks shall my life now steer. Which inhabitant of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1600s wrote substantially better poems than what I've created above?

Answer: Anne Bradstreet

Anne Bradstreet's 1650 poetry collection "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America" was a prophetic, albeit arrogant, title. The poems were allegedly published without her consent, probably because Puritans weren't fans of women writing poetry and then comparing themselves to Greek goddesses. It's all right, though--she shortly did penance by writing the self-abusive poem "The Author to Her Book", which begins by calling her poetry an "ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain". Yikes.

Bradstreet was, in fact, the first female poet to be published in America. I've parodied one of her best poems, "To My Dear and Loving Husband", above: the real work goes like this:

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole Mines of Gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense.

Thy love is such I can no way repay,
The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persevere,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.
4. Which Victorian poet's most famous work ends with a slightly more artistic flourish than the cheap love poetry reproduced below? And it is you, alone, who lights my darkling plain You are unbelievably, outrageously hot, and that in spite Of any ignorant armies who clash by night.

Answer: Matthew Arnold

One of my all-time favorite poems, and also one of the all-time most heavily anthologized poems, Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" is equal parts love song and song of despair. Arnold's speaker laments the "eternal note of sadness" that can be heard at the cliffs of Dover, caused by the ebbing of the "Sea of Faith". Modern technology and ideas have unveiled the "naked shingles of the world", and the speaker proclaims that "the world, which seems/To lie before us, like a land of dreams/So various, so beautiful, so new/Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light". The last three lines of the poem are the most moving, and are said to refer to a scene from the Peloponnesian War:

"And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."

Ray Bradbury quoted the poem in "Fahrenheit 451", a novel tackling similar themes of despair and the loss of interpersonal connections due to modern technologies.
5. Which modern American poet undoubtedly could have penned the following lines of love poetry? i carry your hot heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you go my dear; and wherever you are i follow because You're so unbelievably hot) i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Answer: Edward Estlin Cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings (or as is often preferred, e e cummings) evidently earns his principal rank among the modernists for his beautiful love poetry and not for his capitalization abilities.

Like all the good modernists, he served as an ambulance driver in WWI, during which he was captured by the French and imprisoned. That experience informed his breakout novel "The Enormous Room". Nevertheless, it's the poetry that cummings wrote after the war that really stands out: iconic verses like "anyone lived in a pretty how town" or "somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond" or the poem that I've butchered, "i carry your heart with me".
6. Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, would be no crime As it is, dear, your hotness does make This coyness a grand mistake My vegetable love does grow As I hear time's winged chariot slow Let us roll our sweetness into a ball And your hotness shall please us all Which 17th-century British poet offered a much more convincing show of his love (and lust) in "To His Coy Mistress" than what I've provided above?

Answer: Andrew Marvell

"To His Coy Mistress" is probably the most famous verse of Andrew Marvell, who wrote most of his politically tinged poetry around the time of Oliver Cromwell. This one isn't political, though: most scholars would agree that it fits the genre of a "carpe diem" poetry--urging the speaker's lover to "seize the day". Iconic phrases like "Time's winged chariot" and "the grave's a fine and private place" originate with this poem.

Marvell, along with his good friend John Milton, was a good politician too. During one of England's most chaotic epochs, he managed to write state-sponsored poetry under both Charles I and II, and under Cromwell too. Another of his best-known poems, "Upon Appleton House", was written at the namesake estate of Thomas Fairfax, a leader of the Parliamentarians. Marvell also wrote a highly praised and objective "Horatian Ode" after Cromwell's notorious campaign in Ireland.
7. Let us go then, you and I When the evening is spread out against the sky While there is still time For a hundred indecisions- (You are smoking hot) While the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo Oh! It is impossible to say what I mean! Do I dare to eat a peach? I'm no Prince Hamlet! I was not born for this life- I cannot speak it! I cannot! I do not think you will sing to me. (Even though you're super-duper hot) Now I hear the mermaids singing, each to each The eternal footman watching as I say, "That is not what I meant, at all". (What I meant to say is that you are hot.) Which 20th century author created a speaker whose title "Love Song" sadly fails to make any of those parenthetical references to a woman's hotness?

Answer: T.S. Eliot

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is T.S. Eliot's fine contribution to the genre of "desperate seeks unrequited female love" poetry, but it could hardly be further from "To His Coy Mistress" in style or content. From the opening line about a patient etherised upon a table, "Prufrock" repeatedly belies expectations with modern, mundane imagery cutting across classical allusions. The poem's epigraph is from Dante's "Divine Comedy", and it repeatedly cites images like Michelangelo, Hamlet, and mermaids. Yet the speaker is uncomfortable confessing his love, taking refuge in these "half-deserted streets", is afraid to even eat a peach, and prefers to wait with a hundred different indecisions, visions, and revisions.

"Prufrock", published in 1915, was one of Eliot's first seriously acclaimed poems. Seven years later, he became every Modernist's envy with the inimitable, dare-I-say-incomprehensible, epic "The Waste-Land". Born in the US, Eliot re-naturalized to Britain right as WWI was beginning. The pollution in the Thames inspires the speaker's rambling thoughts in the middle of the poem.
8. It would be rather tedious to go through the entire poem, but who might have written her best-known poem to husband Robert in the far less melodious version below? How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Way one: You are so hot, and that is great Way two: You are so hot, and hold my gaze Way three: You are so hot, as though it's fate

Answer: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is largely remembered today for Sonnet 43 out of her 44-poem collection "Sonnets from the Portuguese", which begins:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.

Robert Browning, also a great poet, convinced Elizabeth to publish "Sonnets from the Portuguese", convinced that it was the best sonnet sequence in centuries. He also inspired the collection's name, having given Elizabeth the nickname "the Portuguese" due to her dark complexion. E. Browning is also known for the verse novel in nine books titled "Aurora Leigh", which was published in 1856.
9. For god's sake hold your tongue and let me love Speak and your hotness shall lose what I speak of As virtuous men pass mildly away There remains only this left to say Thy hot turning makes my circle just I say this not out of lust But since this is a metaphysical poem My meanings, you'll never just quite know 'em. Which English author's collected works could accurately be summarized in the crude love poem above?

Answer: John Donne

The poem I've written above is actually a parody of several John Donne poems, including "The Canonization" and "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning". The Englishman, who lived around the turn of the 17th century, is known today as the foremost representative of the metaphysical poets--a group that also included Andrew Marvell, and believed that every poem ever should be about love or lust.

Okay, a slight exaggeration. But many of Donne's best-known poems have these common extended metaphors, or "conceits". When Donne wasn't busy writing secretly R-rated poetry, he also penned the "Holy Sonnets", a collection of 30 poems published posthumously in 1633. These poems, which include such titles as "Batter my heart, three-person'd god" and "Death, be not proud", secured the author's reputation not just as a love poet, but also one capable of writing serious verse.
10. Which acclaimed poet and playwright might have written these lines? Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely, and much more hot Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May But only cheat the beauty they you taught And never bright your eyes upon me shine But that I think how hot thou truly are And will that warmth will ever be to mine As light from our solar-powered star But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest For physics students know the law once made That energy's conserved and never goest And thus this poem ends in one more line And thou are hot, my dear, it's truly fine.

Answer: Shakespeare

The 14-line poem in iambic pentameter with rhyme scheme ABABCDCDEFEFGG is so inextricably linked to the Bard that nowadays critics just call it a Shakespearean sonnet. Of course, most people would just recognize Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, the well-known "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" poem. However, Will also wrote 153 other poems in his collected sonnets, many of which are unrequited love poems addressed to the mysterious characters "the Fair Youth" or "the Dark Lady". Interestingly, not all of the poems are traditional Shakespearean sonnets. Some have 13 lines, some have 15 or 16 lines, and the final poem in the collection is actually a rhyme royal epic of 47 heptets. The other sonnets also have other great moments too. Proust's title "Remembrance of Things Past" comes from Sonnet 30. Sonnet 130 is the infamous "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun". And Sonnet 116 begins by pledging, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment".

In addition to his poetry, Shakespeare wrote several plays, including "Love's Labour's Lost" and "Pericles, Prince of Tyre". Perhaps you've heard of some others. :)
Source: Author adams627

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