The Reading Room

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CowperKettle

1:09 AM

Bookworm

1:29 AM

Q: What does "in Twos and Threes" mean in this Robert Bly poem?

RIP Robert Bly. While I'm reading his book of poems Stealing Sugar from the Castle, I cannot understand the title of "Love Poem in Twos and Threes", does "in Twos and Threes" mean small groups of people or something else? The poem goes: Love Poem in Twos and Threes What kind of people Are these? ...

5 hours later…

bobble

6:07 AM

@Bookworm @mods My edits to remove unnecessary fluff have been reverted twice

Rand al'Thor

6:46 AM

@bobble A deleted comment from the OP says "Why the last 2 lines keep disappearing?", so maybe she didn't even realise what's going on. However, I also don't think the last two lines should be removed. It's a reasonable clarification that the OP doesn't have any trouble with the words (so people shouldn't post answers with dictionary definitions, as sometimes happens here), and eh, the single word "thanks" is hardly worth an edit IMHO (though I'm generally against the "fluff" policy anyway).

2 hours later…

Bookworm

8:20 AM

Q: Source for the "monsters under our bed" quote attributed to Darwin

I'm trying to locate the source of the famous quote usually attributed to Darwin (and sometimes, The Joker...): “We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us.” Google books and Archive.org only gave me secondary quotes, without any sources. In the follow...

quote-source

3 hours later…

Tsundoku

11:08 AM

@CowperKettle "parenting skills"? "procreation organs"? Patroclus? Puns?

2 hours later…

Bookworm

1:02 PM

Q: Actual meaning of Shakespeare's sonnet 30

Sonnet 30 is commonly believed to be talking aboutt 'How Shakespeare's mood gets lifted when he thinks of his friend' (common believed to be fair youth). So while reading on the topic I came across an article from Owlcation, which I believe should be a credible source: Shakespeare Sonnet 30: "Whe...

poetry william-shakespeare interpretation

Tsundoku

@Bookworm On pain of death to the author, a poem shall have one and only one correct interpretation.

Tsundoku

1:43 PM

John Keats's sonnet When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be uses the same "When ..., when ..., when ..." structure as Shakespeare's sonnet 30.

2 hours later…

Bookworm

3:45 PM

Q: A certain short story by Poe

I believe there is a short story by Poe in which an evil king is killed, and the killers escape by a ladder to the roof. What is the title of this story?

identification-request

Tsundoku

3:58 PM

@Bookworm Probably not by Poe, actually.

bobble

4:15 PM

@Tsundoku I tagged it as such since they do insist shrug

By the way, I've only two chapters of Beauty and Sadness left - would've finished it yesterday but a roommate wanted to go see Eternals in the theatre. Should be able to do a character write-up fairly soon

Rand al'Thor

5:06 PM

I have a copy of the complete works of Poe ... somewhere ... should be able to figure out if that's really a Poe story or not.

Not a very descriptive question anyway.

bobble

5:37 PM

@Randal'Thor can't I at least remove the last sentence? It's worth an edit in my opinion

Tsundoku

6:17 PM

@Randal'Thor I searched through Poe's stories on Wikisource; nothing matched.

Tsundoku

6:33 PM

@Bookworm I would treat the question about sonnet 30 as a normal interpretation question instead of close-voting it.

Rand al'Thor

7:08 PM

@bobble That it's worth an edit in your opinion is clear, since you edited it :-) But there's not much point pushing against the OP's preference when it's not something harmful or inappropriate.

@Tsundoku I left a comment, nudging the OP to ask about evidence supporting interpretations rather than which one is "right".

3 hours later…

Tsundoku

10:02 PM

@CowperKettle Oh, wait, I've got it now! It's pentameters! After all, this is a literature chat room.

Bookworm

10:37 PM

Q: Why does Amado repeat the word morte in the title of his novel A Morte e a Morte de Quincas Berro d'Água?

The title of Jorge Amado's novel A Morte e a Morte de Quincas Berro d'Água (1959) has been translated in various ways: The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell, The Double Death of Quincas Water-Bray (Gregory Rabassa's translation), Die drei Tode des Jochen Wasserbrüller (literally "The three deaths ...