PRE-TEST
Before you begin your study of poetics using this Website, try your hand at this "pre-test." Then once you have completed your study of the various pages of this Website, you will have an opportunity to take a "post-test." Each answer will be found in a pop-up box. (Remember to close each box before you go on to the next question.) Keep tabs on how many answers you get correct.
1. Which of the following is the best definition of poetry?
a. metered lines that rhyme
b. metered lines that need not rhyme but must
have an idea
c. patterned lines of imaginative and concentrated
ideas
d. structured lines that either rhyme or contain
concise ideas
2. What is poetic meter?
a. a pattern of stressed and
unstressed syllables
b. a pattern of long and short syllables
c. a line of scattered stresses and long syllables
d. both a and b
e. a, b, and c
3. What is a poetic foot?
a. a unit of meter
b. a device of rhyme
c. a pattern of several long and short syllables
d. a spondaic pair of sounds
e. none of the above
4. What is the maximum number of syllables that can be found in a poetic foot?
a. one
b. two
c. three
d. four
e. five
5. What is the minimum number of syllables that can be found in a poetic foot?
a. one
b. two
c. three
d. four
e. five
6. How many stressed syllables usually occur in each poetic foot?
a. one
b. two
c. three
d. four
e. there is no limit
7. How many unstressed syllables usually occur in each poetic foot?
a. one
b. one or two
c. more than one but less than four
d. more than one but less than five
e. there is no limit
8. What determines the type of metrical feet used in a line of poetry?
a. the presence of end rhyme
b. the awareness of a noticeable "bounce"
in the line
c. the number of pyrrhic feet in the line
d. the arrangement of long and short syllables
e. all of the above
Answer
Time for a break. (Continue after the photo.)
All that is left of the moat at Norbury where the poet Richard Barnfield was born in sixteenth century England.
9. Match the names of the metrical feet with their appropriate syllable symbols:
|
a. iambic foot
|
P. / _ _
|
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b. trochaic foot
|
Q. / _
|
|
c. anapestic foot
|
R. / /
|
|
d. dactylic foot
|
S. _ /
|
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e. spondaic foot
|
T. _ _ /
|
10. Which of the following statements is most true?
a. a line of poetry has only
one type of foot in it
b. a line of poetry might have more than one
type of foot in it.
c. a line of poetry may mix iambic feet with
trochaic feet, but may never mix it with dactylic feet
d. a line of poetry may mix pyrrhic feet with
spondaic feet, but it may never mix it with dactylic feet
11. Match the metrical line with the correct number of feet:
| a. pentameter | P. one foot line |
| b. heptameter | Q. two foot line |
| c. dimeter | R. three foot line |
| d. tetrameter | S. four foot line |
| e. monometer | T. five foot line |
| f. hexameter | U. six foot line |
| g. trimeter | V. seven foot line |
| h. octometer | W. eight foot line |
12. What is the rhythm of the following poem?
Workers
earn it.
Spendthrifts burn
it.
Bankers lend it.
Rich folks spend
it.
a. iambic pentameter
b. iambic dimeter
c. trochaic pentameter
d. trochaic dimeter
e. iambic tetrameter
13. What is the rhythm of the following lines?
They
cannot know, they cannot care
To
know that they are thought so fair.
a. iambic pentameter
b. iambic dimeter
c. trochaic pentameter
d. trochaic dimeter
e. iambic tetrameter
14. What is the rhythm of the following lines?
The
bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of
learned lumber in his head.
a. iambic pentamenter
b. iambic dimeter
c. trochaic pentameter
d. trochaic dimeter
e. iambic tetrameter
15. What is the rhythm of the following poem?
Thus
I
Pass by
And die.
a. iambic dimeter
b. iambic tetrameter
c. iambic monotmeter
d. trochaic dimeter
e. trochaic monometer
Time for another break. Continue after the photo.
 |
Bed in the Hampstead home of the English poet John Keats who wrote "Ode on a Grecian Urn." |
In the following items (16, 17, 18) determine the verse form:
a. rhymed verse
b. blank verse
c. free verse
16.
The
voice of the last cricket
Across
the first frost
Is
one kind of good-by
It
is so thin a splinter of singing.
17.
Cowards
die many times before their deaths.
The
valiant never taste of death but once.
Of
all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It
seems to me most strange that men should fear.
18.
They
head the list
Of
bad to bet on,
But
I insist
They're
worse to get on.
In the following items (19, 20, 21), determine the kind of rhyme employed:
a. masculine rhyme
b. feminine rhyme
c. triple rhyme
19.
I
like eels
Except
as meals
And
the way they feels.
20.
The
song of carnaries
Never
varies.
21.
He
sought a land so glorious.
He
hoped to be victorious.
Finally, for the following items (22, 23, 24, 25), determine the rhyme scheme:
a. = a b a b
b. = a a b b
c. = a b c d
d. = a b b a
e. none of these
22.
The
year's at the spring
And
day's at the morning.
Morning's
at seven.
The
hillside is dew-pearled.
23.
Poor
Jesse had a wife to mourn all her life.
The
children they were brave.
But
the dirty little coward that shot Mister Howard
Has
laid Jesse James in his grave.
24.
The
hills, the meadows, and the lakes
Enchant
not for their own sweet sakes.
They
cannot know, they cannot care
To
know that they are thought so fair.
25.
Noting
my step to miss
Nothing
in my way,
I
have known no day
In
all my life like this.
How did you do? Fifteen correct answers out of twenty-five would be good. Twenty correct answers out of twenty-five would be excellent. All twenty-five correct? Are you sure you need this Website?
Return now to the index for poetics if you wish to follow the guided course.