Poetic Justice — Answers

Here are today’s answers.

Today’s questions all have a poetry connection.

One

What four word phrase links Scottish poet Robert Burns and the American writer John Steinbeck?

Answer: Of Mice and Men.

Steinbeck’s 1937 novella Of Mice and Men took its title from the second last verse of Burns’ 1785 To a Mouse.

To a Mouse

On turning her up in her nest with the plough, November 1785

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men,
Gang aft a-gley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief and pain,
For promis’d joy.
— Robert Burns.

The full poem can be found at Project Gutenberg

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Two

In 1939, Ernest Hemingway drew inspiration for the title of his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls from a poem by what 17th-century English poet.

Answer: John Donne.

Donne’s Meditation XVII of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions was the source. In his epigraph to the novel Hemingway quotes part of this meditation

No man is an Island, intire of it selfe; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

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Three

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first volume of a seven-volume autobiography by an American writer and poet. The title is taken from the work of African-American poet Laurence Dunbar. Who is this writer and poet?

Answer: Maya Angelou.

Sympathy

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,
When he beats his bars and would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings.
— Laurence Dunbar

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Four

The 2005 book No Country for Old Men and its Coen Brothers film are titled after the first line of the poem Sailing to Byzantium by an Irish poet (1865-1939). Who was this poet?

Answer: William Butler Yeats.

The title is taken from the opening line of William Butler Yeats’ poem Sailing to Byzantium.

Sailing to Byzantium
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
– Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
— W.B. Yeats

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Five

Aldous Huxley took the title for his 1932 novel Brave New World from the works of William Shakespeare. What work provided the title?

Answer: The Tempest.

The title Brave New World derives from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, Miranda’s speech.

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in ‘t.
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, ll. 203–206

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