Verse Case Scenario: Match the Poem (1)

[A] Emily Dickinson | Wrote 1,800 poems from her bedroom, published exactly 10 while alive. This recluse made introversion an art form before it was trendy on social media.

[B] Maya Angelou | Didn't speak for five years as a child, then became the voice of generations. This poem gets quoted at every graduation for a reason—pure resilience in verse form.

[C] Robert Burns | Scotland's favorite son who wrote in dialect so thick, English teachers need subtitles. Compared love to a red rose centuries before Bachelor contestants thought they invented romance.

[C] Lewis Carroll | Math professor who invented words that somehow make perfect sense despite being nonsense. "Brillig" and "slithy toves" entered the dictionary because language couldn't resist.

[D] Percy Bysshe Shelley | Wrote this masterpiece in a competition with a friend—both poems survived, but Percy's became the ultimate "empires fall" mic drop. Ironically outlasted the empire it mocked.

[A] Dylan Thomas | Drank eighteen straight whiskies, then died—but first wrote this villanelle that makes death sound like a boxing match. His father's deathbed inspired rage against the dying light.

[C] Edgar Allan Poe | Chose "Nevermore" because it's the most depressing word possible. Published this for $9, died broke, now every goth kid has it memorized—capitalism's cruelest joke.

[B] William Shakespeare | Will wrote 154 sonnets about love, lust, and legal disputes (probably). This one turns self-pity into art—the Renaissance equivalent of sad-posting but with better vocabulary.

[A] Anna Akhmatova | Survived Stalin by memorizing poems instead of writing them down—her friends would each memorize parts like a literary fight club. Poetry as resistance never looked so elegant.

[D] William Butler Yeats | Spent decades writing love poems to a woman who kept rejecting him for revolutionaries. This one's basically "you'll miss me when I'm gone" with mystical Irish energy.

[D] Emily Dickinson | Made death sound like an Uber ride to eternity. Only Emily could turn the grim reaper into a polite gentleman caller who's really bad at time management.

[C] Rudyard Kipling | Wrote this advice poem for his son, who later died in WWI. Posted in locker rooms worldwide—toxic masculinity's favorite poem accidentally teaches emotional intelligence.

[D] Langston Hughes | Harlem Renaissance's CEO who asked what happens to dreams deferred—they explode, apparently. Made jazz and poetry have a baby that changed American literature forever.

[B] Robert Frost | Most misunderstood poem in history—it's about self-deception, not brave choices. Frost trolled readers for a century; graduation speakers still haven't caught on.

[A] Robert Louis Stevenson | Treasure Island's author also wrote sweet children's verses. This one's so wholesome it could cure cynicism—Victorian optimism at weapons-grade concentration.

[A] Emily Dickinson | Never titled her poems, so scholars just numbered them like evidence in history's most poetic crime scene. Poem 312? That's the death carriage one.

[B] Christina Rossetti | Victorian poet who rejected two marriage proposals for religious reasons, then wrote about desire with an intensity that would make romance novelists blush.

[A] William Wordsworth | Told everyone to quit reading and go touch grass—in 1798. The original "go outside" post, but with more daffodils and existential revelations.

[D] Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings | Broke every typography rule because punctuation is fascist, apparently. This love poem gets tattooed more than tribal armbands—romantic rebels' favorite verse.

[B] Elizabeth Barrett Browning | Wrote this while eloping with Robert against her father's wishes. Counted the ways to love—turns out it's infinite, plus one for dramatic effect.

[C] Edgar Allan Poe | Last complete poem before his mysterious death. About a love so intense that angels got jealous—Poe making heaven the villain is peak gothic energy.

[D] William Shakespeare | Shakespeare inventing emo poetry 400 years early. "Don't even remember me when I'm dead"—the Renaissance's most dramatic ghosting attempt.

[A] Walt Whitman | Wrote this for Lincoln's assassination, then spent his life annoyed it became his most famous work. Wanted to be remembered for homoerotic leaves, got stuck with a boat metaphor.

[B] Edgar Allan Poe | Underwater death city where even death has died—Poe inventing grimdark before Warhammer 40K. Scholars still argue if it's about hell or just Baltimore.

[D] Ben Jonson | Shakespeare's drinking buddy who killed a man in a duel, then became England's first poet laureate. Proof that networking matters more than not being a murderer.

[A] Antwone Fisher | Navy man turned Hollywood screenwriter who proved poetry isn't just for dead white guys. This poem made Denzel Washington cry—that's a Rotten Tomatoes 100%.

[C] Maya Angelou | First poet at a presidential inauguration since Robert Frost (who had his paper blown away by wind). Clinton specifically requested her—democracy's greatest poetry power move.

[C] D A Levy | Cleveland's underground poet who printed his own books, got arrested for obscenity, died at 26. The Midwest's answer to the Beats—corn fields and cosmic consciousness.

[B] John Donne | Priest who wrote erotic poetry, then religious poetry about death like it owed him money. Basically invented the poetic diss track—aimed at mortality itself.

[B] William Blake | Asked who could make a tiger, then spent six stanzas having an existential crisis about it. Symmetry becomes terrifying when Blake's involved—geometry's first horror story.