Shijing, also The Book of Songs or Shih Ching, is the     1     (early) collection of Chinese poetry. It     2     (make) up of 311 poems dating from the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle stage of the Spring and Autumn Period. Nowadays, Confucius is generally believed to be the     3     (edit) of the book.

Shijing is rich in content,     4     (describe) love and labour, war and slavery, customs and marriage, ancestor worship and special events. It is called a mirror of social life.

Poems included in Shijing fall into three sections-poems that come from villages belong to Feng; those written to persuade or praise the rulers belong to Ya; those used at religious     5     (ceremony) belong to Song. Ya and Song are flowery and serious in language.     6    , Feng is relatively inspiring and full of passion.

The opening poem of Shijing, “Cooing and Wooing” (《关雌》), is about love,     7     reads:

By riverside are cooing, a pair of turtledoves;

A good young man is wooing, a fair maiden he loves.

It is vivid that the man is longing     8     (win) over the girl.

Shijing enables people to have a better understanding of Chinese civilization and is also     9     beginning of ancient Chinese poetry. Additionally, it is also frequently quoted in other Chinese texts and has always been referred to     10     moral truth and lessons.

7 . Long ago, poems were recited loud instead of being written down. Back when the Greeks first started the Olympics, they held poetry _________ as well as athletic competitions.

Now, poetry competitions have been revived. This year 120,000 high school students competed in the first Poetry Out Loud national recitation competition,_________ poems from memory for $100,000 in prize money.

The first competitions were held in classrooms. The winners went on to school wide contests, and then they competed in city and state competitions. _________, the 50 state champions, along with the _________ of the District of Columbia came to Washington D.C. last week for the last showdown. After the 51 champions competed _________ another, 12 went on to the _________. Then the field was narrowed to five. The final five had one last chance to “perform” a poem. The overall champ, Jackson Hille, a high school senior from Ohio,_________ a $20,000 scholarship. The National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation _________ Poetry Out Loud, because they realized that hearing a poem performed is a different experience from _________ it on a page.

It’s not just a matter of saying the words in the right order. It’s the tone of __________, the pauses, the gestures and the attitude of the person performing that bring the__________ to life. “Each time we hear somebody recite a poem, we understand again what we found __________ and interesting about it,” said National Public Radio Broadcaster Scott Simon, master of ceremonies for the finals. Hearing it in a new voice offers something new to the listeners.

Not only do the people hearing poems have a(n) __________ experience, but__________ and presenting poems helps the participants understand those poems in a new way. Another __________ of a competition such as Poetry Out Loud is that the participants learn public speaking skills that can help them for life.