Americans have the best words. Our literature is YUGE.
- The structure seen below, the titular setting of an 1851 Nathaniel Hawthorne novel, is located in what American city?
- What American poet penned the lines “My candle burns at both ends; / it will not last the night; / But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— / It gives a lovely light!”? Her unusual middle name honors a Catholic hospital in New York that had saved the life of her uncle shortly before her birth.
- According to a short story published in 1928, the chant “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh ________ R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn” translates roughly to “In his house at R’lyeh, dead ________ waits dreaming.” What one word completes both the alien phrase and its English translation?
- Eugene O’Neill’s best known comedy and first novel in Willa Cather’s Great Plains trilogy have what superficial trait in common?
- What 1915 collection of short poems by Edgar Lee Masters (not Andy Williams) takes the form of epitaphs for the residents of a fictional town named for a real Illinois waterway?
Answer
- Salem, MA
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
- Cthulhu
- titles with exclamation marks (Ah, Wilderness! and O Pioneers!)
- Spoon River Anthology
