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Poetry: fun facts and quiz
The essentials in 7 ideas, with fun facts, an illustrated story and a quiz to see how much you know.
The essentials
What Poetry Is
Poetry uses rhythm, sound and imagery to say more in fewer words. It’s older than writing: early poems were memorised and sung.
Key fact
Rhyme and rhythm helped people memorise poems before writing.
Homer’s Epics
The Iliad and the Odyssey, credited to Homer, are ancient Greek epic poems about the Trojan War and Odysseus’ long journey home.
Key fact
They were probably composed around the 8th century BCE.
Sonnets
A sonnet is a 14-line poem with a set rhyme pattern. Shakespeare wrote 154 of them.
Key fact
Petrarch, in 14th-century Italy, made the sonnet famous.
Haiku
Haiku is a short Japanese form, traditionally with 5, 7 and 5 syllables, often capturing a single moment in nature. Matsuo Bashō is its most famous master.
Key fact
Bashō’s haiku about a frog leaping into a pond is famous across Japan.
Rhythm & Rhyme
Metre is a poem’s beat pattern. Shakespeare often used iambic pentameter: about ten syllables a line, alternating unstressed and stressed, da-DUM da-DUM.
Key fact
Free verse drops fixed rhyme and metre.
Famous Poets
Poets from many cultures are loved worldwide: Rumi from 13th-century Persia, Emily Dickinson from 19th-century America, and Pablo Neruda from Chile.
Key fact
Nearly 1,800 of Dickinson’s poems were found after she died.
Poetry & Songs
Song lyrics are a kind of poetry. In 2016, Bob Dylan became the first songwriter to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Key fact
Rap uses rhyme and rhythm much like traditional poetry.
Fun facts
Rap battles have old cousins: in medieval Scotland, poets traded insults in verse, a contest called flyting.
Homer’s epics are in a rhythm called dactylic hexameter: six beats to every line.
“Sonnet” comes from the Italian for “little song”.
Bashō took his pen name from a banana plant, bashō, that a student planted outside his hut.
Some English words have no perfect rhyme, like “orange” and “silver”.
Rumi, a 13th-century Persian poet, has long been one of the best-selling poets in the United States.
The word “lyric” comes from the lyre, the harp that ancient Greek poets sang to.
Story: The Narrow Road
The Narrow Road
Spring 1689. The poet Matsuo Bashō, now in his forties, sells his little house in Edo, today’s Tokyo, to go on a long journey.
With a friend, he walks some 2,400 km through the wild north of Japan, visiting famous places and writing haiku along the way.
His travel diary, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, mixing prose and haiku, became one of the best-loved books in Japanese literature.
True or false?
Tap your answer to see if you got it, and why.
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Question 1 of 10
Poetry is older than writing.
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True. It was passed on by memory and song.
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Question 2 of 10
The Odyssey tells of Odysseus’ journey home.
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True. After the Trojan War.
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Question 3 of 10
A sonnet has 14 lines.
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True. With a fixed rhyme scheme.
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Question 4 of 10
Matsuo Bashō is haiku’s most famous master.
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True. From 17th-century Japan.
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Question 5 of 10
Iambic pentameter has about ten syllables a line.
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True. Five da-DUM beats.
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Question 6 of 10
Most of Emily Dickinson’s poems were found after her death.
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True. She published only a handful in her lifetime.
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Question 7 of 10
Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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True. In 2016.
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Question 8 of 10
Poems must always rhyme.
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False. Many don’t rhyme at all.
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Question 9 of 10
The Iliad is about the Roman Empire.
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False. It’s about the Trojan War.
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Question 10 of 10
The sonnet was made famous by Homer.
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False. By Petrarch, in 14th-century Italy.
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KnowSoda learns what you know and brings back what you’re about to forget. Poetry has 6 more ideas at the Advanced and Expert levels.
Sources
- Poetry Foundation — Glossary of poetic terms
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Homer, sonnet, haiku, Matsuo Bashō, Emily Dickinson
- Nobel Prize — Literature 2016 (Bob Dylan)
- Emily Dickinson Museum — Publication history
- Poetry Foundation — Glossary: limerick, poetry slam, concrete poetry, rubai
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Dante, Omar Khayyam, poet laureate
