Opening Lines Quiz #2 — Answers

In celebration of April being National Poetry Month, I posed a poetry opening lines quiz in last week’s column. Now you get to see how well you did:

• “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked…” Answer: “Howl”, by Allen Ginsberg

• “I am waiting for my case to come up / and I am waiting / for a rebirth of wonder…” Answer: “I Am Waiting”, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

• “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…” Answer: “Mending Wall”, by Robert Frost

• “I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” Answer: “Song of Myself”, by Walt Whitman

• “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary…” Answer: “The Raven”, by Edgar Allan Poe

• “i thank You God for most this amazing / day:for the leaping greenly spirit of trees / and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes” Answer: “i thank You God for most this amazing”, by e.e. cummings

• “Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me.” Answer: “Because I could not stop for Death”, by Emily Dickinson

• “When day comes we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?” Answer: “The Hill We Climb”, by Amanda Gorman

• “In the burned house I am eating breakfast. / You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast, / yet here I am.” Answer: “Morning in the Burned House”, by Margaret Atwood

• “Out of the hills of Habersham, / Down the valleys of Hall / I hurry amain to reach the plain, / Run the rapid and leap the fall…” Answer: “Song of the Chattahoochee”, by Sidney Lanier

• “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; / Weep and you weep alone.” Answer: “Solitude”, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

• “Out of the night that covers me, / Black and the pit from pole to pole / I thank whatever gods may be / For my unconquerable soul.” Answer: “Invictus”, by William Ernest Henry

• “Father calls me William, sister calls me Will, / Mother calls me Willie, but the fellers call me Bill!” Answer: “Jest ‘Fore Christmas”, by Eugene Field

• “‘Will you walk into my parlor?’ said the spider to the fly…” Answer: “The Spider and the Fly”, by Mary Howitt

• “April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain.” Answer: “The Wasteland”, by T.S. Eliot

• “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Answer: “Sonnet 43”, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

• “Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, / With conquering limbs astride from land to land…” Answer: “The New Colossus”, by Emma Lazarus

• “You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies…” Answer: “Still I Rise”, by Maya Angelou

• “What happens to a dream deferred?” Answer: “Harlem”, by Langston Hughes

• “Drink to me only with thine eyes, / And I will pledge with mine…” Answer: “Song:to Celia”, by Ben Jonson

On the Shelves of the Downieville Library

I’m not exactly sure how many of the poems can be found in the library, but am fairly certain that a number of them can be. What I do know is that the Downieville Library has over 90 books of poetry on its shelves, found in both the adult and children’s sections of the library.