Poetry Support

Select an answer you think is correct in each section:

1.
a) Poems need rhyme to be good poems.
b) Rhyme is one of the most effective ways of binding a poem into a single unit.
c) It is spelling not sound that determines rhyme.

2.
a) Rhyme in poetry is sometimes achieved with word order.
b) There is essentially only one kind of rhyme in poetry.
c) Rhyme is not affected by sound variation.

Read the extract and answer the questions that follow.

Out there, we've walked quite friendly up to Death;
Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland, -
Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand.
We've sniffed the green thick odour of his breath, -
Our eyes wept, but our courage didn't writhe.
He's spat at us with bullets and he's coughed
Shrapnel. We chorussed when he sang aloft;
We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.

(From Wilfred Owen's "The Next War")
(In Poets and poetry (1992). R.K. Sadler, T.A.S. Hayllar & C.J. Powell (Eds.). Melbourne: Macmillan Education.)

3. What kind of rhyme is being used in the above extract?
a) half-rhyme
b) internal rhyme
c) end-rhyme

He was so frail,
So small where he lay dead,
Hands at the trail,
And slack the little head;
They laid him in her lap
And still she did not weep,
But with his tattered cap
Fanned him asleep.
And then, 'O God!' she said,
And then, 'O God!'
And touched him where the shod
Hard hoof had marked his head.

Mary Gilmore: "Killed in the street")
(In Poets and poetry (1992), R.K. Sadler, T.A.S. Hayllar & C.J. Powell (Eds.) Melbourne: Macmillan Education.)

4. What kind of rhyme is being used in the above poem?
a) end-rhyme
b) slant-rhyme
c) internal rhyme

Read the poem printed below and answer the questions (5 - 8) that follow.

The Bat
By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an ageing house.

His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.

He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light.

But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:

For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face.

Theodore Roethke
(In The Poetic Voice (1974). A.R. Kitzhaber & S. Malarkey (Eds.). Sydney: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.)

5. What statement below most accurately describes the rhyming scheme of the above poem?
a) This poem is written in end-rhyme.
b) This poem is written in short, rhyming stanzas.
c) This poem is written in rhyming couple

6. Which statement do you think is correct?
a) A couplet is two successive lines of verse which rhyme and usually have the same rhythm.
b) A couplet is two successive lines of verse mostly with end-rhyme.
c) A couplet is two successive lines of verse which always have run-on lines.

7. Which statement do you think is correct?
a) Writing in couplets is found only in children's poetry.
b) Couplets in a poem are only a memory device.
c) Couplets enclose and highlight a unit of meaning/thought and/or a picture.

8. The fourth couplet of the above poem is communicating:
a) Disbelief and horror
b) Horror
c) Fear of something strange and different

9. Identify the types of rhyme used in the stanzas below:

The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!

(From Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner")
(In The Progress of poetry (1965). C.J. Horne & M.O"Brien (Eds.). Melbourne: Heinemann.)

a) The above stanza contains both end-rhyme and internal rhyme.
b) The above stanza contains only end-rhyme.
c) The above stanza contains both end-rhyme and para-rhyme.

My Papa's Waltz
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

Theodore Roethke
(In Poetry An Introduction (1981). R. Miller & R.A. Greenberg (Eds.). New York: St Martin's Press.)

10. There is both full rhyme (end-rhyme) and para-rhyme (half-rhyme) in the above poem:
a) In stanza 4
b) In stanza 3
c) In stanza 1

11. How would you describe the rhyming scheme in the above poem?
a) abab throughout
b) abab cdcd efef ghgh

Read the extract below and answer the questions that follow:

Sagest of women, even of widows, she
Resolved that Juan should be quite a paragon,
And worthy of the noblest pedigree,
(His sire was of Castile, his Dam from Aragon):
Then, for accomplishments of chivalry,
In case our Lord the King should go to war again,
He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery,
And how to scale a fortress - or a nunnery.

(From Lord Byron's "Don Juan")
(In Don Juan (1977). George Gordon Byron. T.G. & E. Steffan & W.W. Pratt (Eds.). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books.)

12. There is an exact feminine rhyming scheme used in the above extract in the lines ending with:
a) "she" and "pedigree"; "paragon" and "Aragon"; "gunnery" and "nunnery"
b) "paragon" and "Aragon"; "gunnery" and "nunnery"
c) "she", "pedigree" and "chivalry"

13. The unexpected rhyming of "gunnery" with "nunnery" gives:
a) a comic conclusion
b) a conclusion which people would not find unusual
b) a practice common to medieval chivalric times

Read the short extract below and answer the question that follows.

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then ¹
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten; ²
----------------------------------------------------
In her attic window the staff she set ³
To show that one heart was loyal yet. ⁴
----------------------------------------------------
Under his slouched hat left and right. ⁵
He glanced: the old flag met his sight. ⁶

(From John Greenleaf Whittier's "Barbara Frietchie".)
(In The Four Corners (1968). A.K. Thomson (Ed.). Brisbane: The Jacaranda Press.)

14.The inversion/word order in lines 1, 3 and 5 of the above extract:
a) helps to achieve a rhyming scheme and smooth flow.
b) (b) the inversion/word order in lines 1,3 and 5 helps to achieve a quaintness in the poem.

Score = /14
Correct answers: