Modern and Contemporary Poetry MCQs 2026

W.B. Yeats's "The Second Coming" opens with

1. Athe falcon not hearing the falconer✓
2. Bdaffodils beside a lake✓
3. Ca nightingale in a forest✓
4. Da rubber hose on stage✓

Yeats's "The Second Coming" prophesies a rough beast

1. Asailing toward Ithaca✓
2. Bwalking to Canterbury✓
3. Cdriving to Boston✓
4. Dslouching toward Bethlehem to be born✓

T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land (1922) reflects

1. AVictorian faith certainty✓
2. Bpost-World War I spiritual desolation✓
3. CRestoration marriage wit✓
4. Dsales success myths only✓

The epigraph of The Waste Land alludes to

1. Athe Cumaean Sibyl wishing to die✓
2. BKeats's nightingale✓
3. CWordsworth's daffodils✓
4. DBrowning's duke✓

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by Eliot is

1. Aa dramatic interior monologue of hesitation✓
2. Ba Spenserian allegory✓
3. Ca sales requiem✓
4. Da doll's house slam✓

Prufrock's famous question includes

1. A"Do I dare to eat a peach?"✓
2. B"How do I love thee?"✓
3. C"To be or not to be"✓
4. D"What is truth?"✓

Philip Larkin's "Church Going" treats

1. AGodot's roadside tree✓
2. BWilly's car✓
3. CHiggins's lab✓
4. Da secular visitor's puzzled respect for empty churches✓

Larkin's "This Be The Verse" bluntly begins

1. A"They fuck you up, your mum and dad"✓
2. B"April is the cruellest month"✓
3. C"I wandered lonely as a cloud"✓
4. D"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness"✓

Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" explores

1. Achoice and retrospective self-mythologizing✓
2. BPuritan election only✓
3. CRestoration contract law✓
4. Dphonetic class war✓

Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" ends with

1. A"Not with a bang but a whimper"✓
2. B"And miles to go before I sleep"✓
3. C"Beauty is truth"✓
4. D"I will arise and go now"✓

Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass celebrates

1. Ademocratic self and the American body politic✓
2. BArthurian knights only✓
3. CRestoration rakes only✓
4. DNorwegian dolls only✓

Whitman's "Song of Myself" contains the line

1. A"I dare not eat a peach"✓
2. B"Something is rotten"✓
3. C"I contain multitudes"✓
4. D"Attention must be paid"✓

Wallace Stevens's "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" is set at

1. AXanadu's dome✓
2. BTintern's Wye✓
3. Ca funeral wake with domestic bluntness✓
4. DBrooklyn sales office✓

Stevens's "Sunday Morning" questions

1. Awhether sales require rubber hose✓
2. Bwhether beauty requires heavenly paradise✓
3. Cwhether Godot will come✓
4. Dwhether Nora forged notes✓

Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" uses imagery of

1. AArthurian weavers only✓
2. BRestoration dowries only✓
3. CNazism and vampirism to confront patriarchal trauma✓
4. Dphonetic drills only✓

Plath's Ariel collection includes

1. A"Ulysses" and "Mariana"✓
2. B"Lady Lazarus" and "Daddy"✓
3. C"Kubla Khan" and "Christabel"✓
4. D"Prufrock" and "Gerontion"✓

Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium" rejects

1. Asales commissions✓
2. Bcaretaker jobs✓
3. Cnatural generation for artistic permanence✓
4. Dforged loans✓

Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" retells

1. Aa sales flashback✓
2. Ba doll's party✓
3. Ca phonetics exam✓
4. Da Greek myth of violent divine conception✓

Yeats's gyre theory appears in

1. AThe Waste Land only✓
2. B"The Second Coming" and A Vision✓
3. CLeaves of Grass only✓
4. DThe Faerie Queene only✓

Eliot's "Gerontion" presents

1. Aan old man in a rented house reflecting on history's fragments✓
2. Ba young nightingale✓
3. Ca Restoration rake✓
4. Da salesman's son✓

Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent" argues poets must

1. Areject all predecessors✓
2. Bwrite only free verse✓
3. Cavoid all allusion✓
4. Dsituate themselves within historical tradition✓

The opening "April is the cruellest month" belongs to

1. A"The Second Coming"✓
2. B"Dover Beach"✓
3. C"Ode to a Nightingale"✓
4. DThe Waste Land✓

Larkin's "An Arundel Tomb" meditates on

1. AGodot's absent arrival✓
2. BWilly's car crash✓
3. Ctime eroding yet leaving a sculpted hand-hold✓
4. DEliza's vowels✓

Larkin's "The Whitsun Weddings" describes

1. Aa mariner's albatross✓
2. Ba duke's portrait✓
3. CSatan's Pandemonium✓
4. Da train journey past postwar wedding parties✓

Frost's "Mending Wall" repeats

1. A"Something is rotten"✓
2. B"I contain multitudes"✓
3. C"Good fences make good neighbors"✓
4. D"Season of mists"✓

Frost's "Birches" imagines a boy swinging birches toward

1. Aheaven but returning earthward✓
2. BHell's Pandemonium only✓
3. CBrooklyn only✓
4. DByzantium only✓

Whitman's Civil War poems appear in

1. AHarmonium✓
2. BAriel✓
3. CLyrical Ballads✓
4. DDrum-Taps✓

Whitman's free verse relies on

1. ASpenserian nine-line stanzas only✓
2. Bcadenced catalog and parallel structure✓
3. Cstrict heroic couplets only✓
4. DBeckettian silence only✓

Stevens's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" is

1. Aa Victorian dramatic monologue✓
2. Ba Restoration comedy✓
3. Ca modernist series of haiku-like meditations✓
4. Da sales dialogue✓

Stevens's "Of Modern Poetry" defines poetry as

1. Apure pastoral escapism only✓
2. Bmandatory rhyme royal only✓
3. Cphonetic instruction only✓
4. Dthe mind pressing back against reality✓

Plath's "Lady Lazarus" declares

1. A"I have measured out my life in coffee spoons"✓
2. B"I have nine lives" and ritual rebirth through suffering✓
3. C"I am the master of my fate"✓
4. D"To strive, to seek"✓

Yeats's "Easter, 1916" commemorates

1. AAmerican salesmen✓
2. BLondon phoneticians✓
3. CIrish rebels including Pearse and MacDonagh✓
4. DNorwegian bankers✓

Yeats's "Among School Children" asks

1. A"How can we know the dancer from the dance?"✓
2. B"Do I dare to eat a peach?"✓
3. C"What is truth?"✓
4. D"Who is Godot?"✓

Eliot's Prufrock is set in a cityscape suggesting

1. AXanadu pleasure-dome✓
2. BLondon fog and social paralysis✓
3. CEdenic bower✓
4. DArthurian Camelot✓

Eliot's "The Hollow Men" ends

1. A"To strive, to seek, to find"✓
2. B"Beauty is truth"✓
3. C"I will arise and go"✓
4. D"Not with a bang but a whimper"✓

Larkin's poetic tone is often described as

1. Aheroically epic only✓
2. Babsurdist vaudeville only✓
3. CRestoration fop only✓
4. Dmelancholy, observational and anti-romantic✓

Frost's "Fire and Ice" debates whether

1. Asales or phonetics✓
2. BGodot or boy✓
3. Cdesire or hatred will destroy the world✓
4. DNora or Torvald✓

Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" elegizes

1. AJohn Keats✓
2. BArthur Hallam✓
3. CAbraham Lincoln✓
4. DT.S. Eliot✓

Stevens's "The Idea of Order at Key West" explores

1. Arubber hose on stage✓
2. Bforged bank notes✓
3. Cthe sea and a woman's song shaping reality✓
4. Dcaretaker's bucket✓

Plath's confessional mode is associated with

1. ASpenserian allegory only✓
2. Bautobiographical extremity and mythic persona✓
3. CRestoration contract wit only✓
4. DVictorian dramatic monologue only✓

Modernist poetry often features

1. Aunbroken medieval fabliau only✓
2. Buniform heroic couplets only✓
3. Cexclusive sales realism only✓
4. Dfragmentation, allusion and irony✓

Imagism (associated with early Eliot and Pound) urged

1. Adirect treatment of the thing, economy of language✓
2. Blengthy Victorian narrative digression✓
3. Cmandatory rhyme royal✓
4. Dexclusive pastoral diction✓

Eliot's Four Quartets meditate on

1. Asales routes only✓
2. Bphonetic bets only✓
3. Ccaretaker squabbles only✓
4. Dtime, memory and spiritual intersection✓

Yeats's "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" yearns for

1. ABrooklyn requiems✓
2. Bpeaceful natural retreat from urban noise✓
3. CLondon drawing rooms✓
4. DOslo courts✓

Larkin's "High Windows" juxtaposes

1. ASatan's rebellion✓
2. BMirabell's plot✓
3. Cyouthful sexual freedom with poet's aging envy✓
4. DWilly's flashbacks✓

Frost's "After Apple-Picking" drifts toward

1. AGodot's waking✓
2. Bdreamy exhaustion after harvest✓
3. CHiggins's lesson✓
4. DStockmann's lecture✓

Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" affirms

1. Aidentity across time with future commuters✓
2. BUlysses's crew only✓
3. Cthe Duke's portrait only✓
4. DPrufrock's peach only✓

Plath's "Tulips" contrasts hospital whiteness with

1. Agreen thought in shade✓
2. Bviolent red tulips invading recovery✓
3. CAlph's sacred river✓
4. DWye's sylvan Wye✓

Stevens's "The Snow Man" requires a mind of winter to perceive

1. Anothing that is not there and the nothing that is✓
2. Bonly nightingale song✓
3. Conly daffodil crowds✓
4. Donly rubber hose✓

Confessional poetry of the 1950s–60s includes

1. AChaucer, Gower and Lydgate✓
2. BPlath, Sexton and Lowell✓
3. CCongreve, Wycherley and Vanbrugh✓
4. DSpenser, Sidney and Raleigh✓