1 . How to Read a Poem
You’ve selected the poem you want to read — congratulations! Now it’s time for the business of reading it.
Examine the title and the shape
Read the poem as you normally read anything
Reading poetry doesn’t require a clever approach; you can read as you’d read anything else. On the first pass through, absorb whatever it is that arises upon first impression.
Next, try reading the poem out loud or search for readings of the poem online. This is where the music of a poem emerges, and you can feel the shape of each word and line as you move through it.
Add context to paint a full picture
Finally, return to the poem context.
| A．Re-read for sound |
| B．Re-read for meaning |
| C．Dig into the author’s history |
| D．Notice where in the poem you react |
| E．Look for where the poem offers a moment of surprise |
| F．Before you start a poem, you should first read the title |
| G．Long messy forms might mean it’s coming from a place of confusion or anger |
2 . If you enjoy American stories, you’ll have noticed that many of them take place on the road. Many famous American novels are about stories that occur while their characters are traveling along highways. These novels are often celebrations of American life.
Jesmyn Ward’s National Book Award winner Sing, Unburied, Sing is a road novel, but not a celebration. The road journey here is through Mississippi, as an African-American mother and her two children travel to collect her white husband as he’s released from jail.
Neither the mother, Leonie, nor the father, Michael, are ideal parents. Leonie in particular is so full of anger and regret that she takes out her unhappiness on her children, the 13-year-old Jojo and his little sister Kayla.
The telling of the story is divided between various narrators. Jojo, the boy, is the most sympathetic of them. But it is worrying to read about how he experiences the world. Even though he’s young, he’s already experienced the dark side of life. The opening sentence of the book gives a sense of Jojo’s unnatural maturity—“I like to think I know what death is. I like to think that I could look at it straight.”
But who, or what, is to blame for these sad circumstances? For Ward, it’s clearly the past. She admires the work of fellow novelist William Faulkner. When she thinks about the past, she’s of the same mind as him.
Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” At one point, Ward says that her characters are “pulling the past with them.” like a too-heavy trailer(拖车) coupled to the car, as they journey on through Mississippi to the jailhouse. The biggest part of this past, of course, is racism—the remains of slavery—which is always there, and ruining life.
This is probably why The Washington Post listed Sing, Unburied, Sing as one of its 10 choices of 2017’s Best Books. “The misery of this one family is tied to crimes that stretch over decades,” wrote the newspaper.
1. What can we learn about Sing, Unburied, Sing from the text?| A．It was recently adapted as a film. |
| B．It’s a celebration of American life. |
| C．It is a story of a road trip through Mississippi. |
| D．It’s one of 2017’s best-selling American novels. |
| A．is the main narrator of the novel | B．is unusually mature for his age |
| C．presents less sympathy than others | D．is the youngest child in the family |
| A．The unhappy marriage of the parents. | B．The experience of being in prison. |
| C．The lack of financial support. | D．The existence of racism. |
| A．To prove Ward shares a similar opinion of the past with him. |
| B．To show Ward has drawn a lot of inspiration from him. |
| C．To show Ward is as great a novelist as he is. |
| D．To compare Ward’s writing style with his. |
