In an effort to keep a little poetry in my life long after National Poetry Month passed, I decide to read at least one poem a day after scanning the newspaper over breakfast. Thanks to the free online poetry-in-your-inbox services, it’s been an easy resolution(解决办法)to keep.
Poem-a-Day was started during National Poetry Month in 2016, and it focuses on new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.
Ted Kooser offers a similar service through his American Life in Poetry Series, though it’s a weekly, rather than a daily. Kooser briefly introduces each week’s poem, offering a little bit of information about the selection, the writer, and books where readers can turn to if they want more work from the featured poet.
Reading at least one poem a day has been like an intellectual vitamin, giving me a small dose(剂量)of literature even on busy days when I can’t get to the novels and non-fiction on my desk beside the bed. Another benefit has been connecting with a lot of talented poets I wouldn’t otherwise know about. Poetry being what it is, even the best talents in the style can work in relative obscurity(朦胧). Maybe the biggest benefit of reading a poem every morning has been the chance to see the familiar in new ways.
Last April, I wondered if I could remind myself to read a poem each morning. Now, deep in summer, I wonder if I could ever do without it.
The author intends to read a poem every morning by means of ________.A.scanning the newspaper over breakfast |
B.the free online poetry-in-your-inbox services |
C.starting Poem-a-Day during National Poetry Month |
D.focusing on new poems and contemporary poets on weekdays |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】GREAT BOOKS TO TEACH CHILDREN ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE
Here is a shortened list of books sponsored by the magazines TIME and TIME for Kids that are suitable for primary schoolers. To make the list, we considered how age-appropriate the material was, and whether the tone and story line left the reader feeling engaged and empowered rather than anxious or confused.
Experts recommend the youngest kids to read books that explore the beauty and fragility (脆弱) of nature. When developing an appreciation for the world around them, they can switch to books that show the cause and effect of how humans treat our planet, and why it’s important to respect the environment. For older primary school kids, picture books can illustrate how our use of fossil (化石) fuels contributes to global warming. Most of the books on the list also offer lessons about how children, families, schools, and communities can make a difference.
THANK YOU, EARTH: A LOVE LETTER TO OUR PLANET By April Pulley Sayre This photography book shows to us plants, animals and landscapes in vivid colors and descriptions. From up-close images of insects to pictures of mountain ranges, the pages introduce children to the planets’ diversity in a simple but effective way. | THE LORAX By Dr. Seuss Thanks to its rhyme, and whimsical illustration, this classic tale is suitable for young children who can grasp the scarcity of natural resources, and also older kids who can see a danger in valuing profits over long-term environmental harm. |
WE ARE WATER PROTECTORS By Carole Lindstrom A tribute to native tribes that are protecting the planet, this book vividly shows the harms of oil pipelines. Kids will see the value of community action, while adults will recognize the story of the native tribes Standing Rock Sioux’s fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline. | POLAR BEAR, WHY IS YOUR WORLD MELTING? By Robert E. Wells This book introduces the greenhouse effect with illustrations showing how sunlight gets trapped. It then explains fossil-fuel energy, and our reliance on it for electricity and transportation. The pages are full of science. |
A.Confusing story line. |
B.The tone of anxiety. |
C.The books sponsorship. |
D.Age-appropriate content. |
A.They can see the value of community action. |
B.They can know how to protect the native tribes. |
C.They can recognize the story of the native tribes. |
D.They can understand the importance of oil pipelines. |
【推荐2】The clearing of my parents' home has made me think about the importance, even centrality of books to the house's life and soul. The house, and our lives in it, would not have been the same without books. The force of the statement comes home to me as I see what happens when shelves are emptied. The rooms suddenly look uncomfortably bare.
I always rather took it for granted that books furnished a room. The only rooms in our house without books were the dining-room and the bathrooms. Otherwise there were books everywhere: in all the bedrooms, in the drawing-room and in the piano room which became my parents' comfortable winter study.
I couldn't help feeling that books were rather like people: some more formal and boring, others more entertaining; some simply for show, others with unpromising outsides but rich interiors. They had more, in fact, than furnish a room, and they were companions who will offer insights, good advice.
Now the books are being contributed (not all, to be sure, but very many), and I fear for their future, almost as if they were refugees(难民). “Habent sua fata libelli”, goes as the old Latin saying, originally written by Retentions; it meant that the fate and future of books were determined by the capability of the reader. But the meaning of the phrase has been misunderstood by time and is now associated with the physical fate of particular books, how they have passed from owner to owner. This is how Walter Benjamin read the saying when he wrote his essay “Unpacking My Library”, which analyses the extraordinarily close relationship between a collector and his or her books.
As I deal with the books –many are going to charity (慈善) shops and I hope they will find good homes–I can’t help wondering if my generation is the last that will oversee such a process. Books are disappearing, as more and more are bought in electronic form and exist only as bytes of information on E–books or other devices. Does this matter? Could books become more spiritual, as they lose their physicality?
From the passage we know that _____________.A.the author is attached to physical form of books |
B.the author’s books are bound to find good homes |
C.e-books have taken the place of traditional ones |
D.the author’s parents used every room of theirs as a study |
【推荐3】I was 16 years old the day I skipped school for the first time. It was easily done: Both my parents left for work before my school bus arrived, so when it showed up at my house on that cold winter morning, I simply did not get on. The perfect crime!
And what did I do with myself on that glorious stolen day, with no adult in charge and no limits on my activities? Did I get high? Hit the mall for shopping?
Nope. I built a warm fire in the wood stove, prepared a bowl of popcorn, grabbed a blanket, and read. I was thrilled and transported by a book — it was Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises—and I just needed to be alone with it for a little while. I ached to know what would happen to Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley and Robert Cohn. I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting in a classroom taking another biology exam when I could be traveling through Spain in the 1920s with a bunch of expatriates (异乡客).
I spent that day lost in words. Time fell away, as the room around me turned to mist, and my role — as a daughter, sister, teenager, and student — in the world no longer had any meaning. I had accidentally come across the key to perfect happiness: I had become completely absorbed in something I loved.
Looking back on it now, I can see that some subtle things were happening to my mind and to my life while I was in that state of absorption. Hemingway’s language was quietly braiding itself into my imagination. I was downloading information about how to create simple and elegant sentences, a good and solid plot. In other words, I was learning how to write. Without realizing it, I was on the trail of my own fate. Writing now absorbs me the way reading once did and happiness is their generous side effect.
What can we infer from the last paragraph?A.I was aware of the subtle things back then. |
B.I simply learnt how to write on the internet. |
C.Hemingway’s style influenced me a lot. |
D.Becoming a writer was my childhood dream. |
VOLUNTEERING IN THE BUSH
8 March
I just got a parcel from home! It took about two weeks to arrive, and it was a bit damaged, but it was so nice to get some sweets and jam from home; I’ve been dying to have some of my favourite sweets, and it’s always nice to get mail!
So I’ve been here in the jungle for about a month now. My secondary school is a bush school. The classrooms are made of bamboo, with clay floors and roofs of grass. It takes me only a few minutes to walk to school down a dusty track covered in weeds. When I reach the school grounds, I’m greeted by a chorus of “good morning” from the boys. Unlike students in our country, these boys do not wear cotton uniforms, and many of them also have to walk a long way, sometimes for up to two hours, just to get to school.
There’s no electricity, running water or even textbooks, not to mention laptops, tablets, or other modern devices! All the students have are pencils, rubbers, and paper. I’m still trying to adapt to these conditions. I’ve had to become much more imaginative in my teaching. Science is my most challenging subject as my students have no concept of doing experiments. There is no equipment, and since there isn’t even a washroom, if I need water I have to carry it from my house in a basin! It’s important not to be too rigid about rules here, too. The other day I was showing the boys a chemistry experiment when, before I knew it, the mixture was bubbling out of the test tube spilling everywhere! The class became a circus as the boys, who had never come across anything like this before, started jumping out of the windows. Sometimes I wonder how relevant chemistry is to these students — few will ever become chemists — and most will be going back to their villages after Year 8 anyway. To be honest, I doubt whether I’m making any difference to these boys’ lives at all.
17 April
Last weekend I made my first visit to a remote village, home to one of our students, Tombe. Another teacher and I walked for two and a half hours to get there — first, up a mountain from where we had fantastic views, and then down a shaded path to the valley below. When we arrived at the village, Tombe’s mother, Kiak, saw us coming and started crying “ieee ieee”. We shook hands with all the villagers. Everyone seemed to be related to Tombe.
Tombe’s father, Mukap, a man with a strong jaw and a wrinkled forehead, led us to his house, a low, round bamboo hut with no windows, with a door just big enough to get through, and with grass sticking out of the roof — this shows it is a man’s house. Such housing is dark inside so it took time for our eyes to adjust. Fresh grass had been laid on the floor and there was a platform for Jenny and me to sleep on. There was a fireplace in the centre of the hut. The only possessions I could see were one broom, a few saucers, a kettle, cups, pans, and a couple of jars.
Mukap built a fire outside and laid stones on it to heat. He then placed the hot stones in an empty oil drum with kau kau (sweet potato), ripe corn, and greens. He then covered the vegetables with banana leaves and left them to steam. It smelled delicious. We ate inside the hut sitting round the fire. I loved listening to the family talking softly to each other in their language, even though I could not participate much in the conversation. Luckily, Tombe interpreted for us.
Later, I noticed a can standing upside down on the grill over the fire. After a while, Tombe threw it out of the doorway. Tombe told me that the can was heated to dry out the leftover food. His family believes that leftovers attract bad spirits in the night, so any leftover food is dried up in a can and the can is then thrown out of the hut.
We left the village the next morning after many goodbyes and firm handshakes. My muscles were aching and my knees shaking as we dragged ourselves down the mountain towards home. That evening I fell happily into bed. It was such a privilege to have spent a day with Tombe’s family.
1. What’s the main idea of the text?A.Jo went to a bush school to visit friends. |
B.Jo’s experience as a volunteer in the bush. |
C.Introduction of a bush school. |
D.Introduction of Tombe’s home in the village. |
A.Jo and another teacher visited Tombe’s home in the village. B.Getting mail from home made Jo feel nice. C.The school where Jo worked and Jo’s work at school. |
Part 2(Paras.2-3)
Part 3(Paras.4-8)
3. What’s the purpose of the author in writing the blog?
A.To tell us her teaching life in the bush school as a volunteer. |
B.To tell us her learning life in the bush school as a volunteer. |
C.To tell us that she couldn’t get any money by teaching the poor students. |
D.To tell us how happy she was in the small village. |
A.Because they were frightened by the bubbling mixture. |
B.Because they couldn’t stand the terrible smell of the mixture. |
C.Because they didn’t like doing chemistry experiments. |
D.Because they knew chemistry was not relevant to them. |
A.Because this was Jo’s first visit to a remote village. |
B.Because she was expressing her friendliness and warmth. |
C.Because Jo walked for two and a half hours to get there. |
D.Because she was afraid of strangers. |
A.Happy. | B.Sad. |
C.Worried. | D.Upset. |
Jo worked at a bush school whose classrooms
(1) There is no equipment, and since there isn’t even a washroom, if I need water I have to carry it from my house in a basin!
(2) The class became a circus as the boys, who had never come across anything like this before, started jumping out of the windows.
(3) His family believes that leftovers attract bad spirits in the night, so any leftover food is dried up in a can and the can is then thrown out of the hut.
【推荐2】Terri Bolton is a dab hand when it comes to DIY (do-it-yourself). Skilled at putting up shelves and piecing together furniture, she never pays someone else to do a job she can do herself.
She credits these skills to her late grandfather and builder Derek Lloyd. From the age of six, Terri, now 26, accompanied Derek to work during her school holidays. A day’s work was rewarded with £5 in pocket money. She says: “I’m sure I wasn’t much of a help to start with, painting the rooms and putting down the flooring throughout the house. It took weeks and it was backbreaking work, but I know he was proud of my skills.”
Terri, who now rents a house with friends in Wandsworth, South West London, says DIY also saves her from losing any deposit when a tenancy (租期) comes to an end. She adds: “I’ve moved house many times and I always like to personalise my room and put up pictures, so, it’s been useful to know how to cover up holes and repaint a room to avoid any charges when I’ve moved out.”
With millions of people likely to take on DIY projects over that coming weeks, new research shows that more than half of people are planning to make the most of the long, warm summer days to get jobs done. The average spend per project will be around £823. Two thirds of people aim to improve their comfort while at home. Two fifths wish to increase the value of their house. Though DIY has traditionally been seen as male hobby, the research shows it is women now leading the charge.
Which is closest in meaning to “a dab hand” in paragraph 1?
A.An artist. | B.A winner. | C.A specialist. | D.A pioneer. |
【推荐3】Guy Noble, one of Australia’s most famous conductors, who conducted the touring concert “East Meets West”, said he’d like to learn more about Chinese music. “I’m impressed by the history and the beauty Chinese music has,” he’s said in an interview recently.
“East Meets West” concert tour in Australia was resumed this year after being postponed twice due to the pandemic. It was hosted in Canberra last Saturday, bringing audiences some well-known Chinese and Western pieces such as Jasmine Flower, Carmen, Romeo and Juliet, and The Yellow River.
While it was called “East Meets West”, music from China and the West with the same themes was brought together. Chinese singer Ya Fen and Australian singer Victoria Lambourn performed a duet (二重唱) Hope Betrayed, which was inspired by the Chinese classic novel A Dream of Red Mansions. Noble said he loved the duet as it showed completely different singing styles: traditional Chinese opera style and Western opera style. “They’re not exactly the same, but they came together,” he said.
Having been a professional conductor for more than 20 years, Noble called music an international language. He noted that most music at the concert was about love, which was also an international language. He also spoke highly of some Chinese musicians, such as pianist Lang Lang who he thought has inspired many kids in China to learn music.
Noble admitted his knowledge of Chinese culture was limited. He said that conducting the Canberra concert was “an experience that I’ve enjoyed”, which made him more interested in discovering the background and history of the music, as well as the stories behind it. Noble is ready to create more things that can involve dance or calligraphy or some of the other aspects of Chinese culture, and put them together with music.
What does the underlined word “resumed” in paragraph 2 mean?A.Restarted. |
B.Expanded. |
C.Paused. |
D.Concluded. |
Unde Tom’s store is having a big week sale! Everything 30% off All TVs, radios, MP3s, digital cameras and computers Open from 12:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. |
A.8:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. | B.9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. |
C.12:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. | D.6:00p.m. to 8:00 p.m. |
【推荐2】By day, Robert Titterton is a lawyer. In his spare time though he goes on stage beside pianist Maria Raspopova — not as a musician but as her page turner. “I’m not a trained musician, but I’ve learnt to read music so I can help Maria in her performance.”
Mr Titterton is chairman of the Omega Ensemble but has been the group’s official page turner for the past four years. His job is to sit beside the pianist and turn the pages of the score so the musician doesn’t have to break the flow of sound by doing it themselves. He said he became just as nervous as those playing instruments on stage.
“A lot of skills are needed for the job. You have to make sure you don’t turn two pages at once and make sure you find the repeats in the music when you have to go back to the right spot.” Mr Titterton explained.
Being a page turner requires plenty of practice. Some pieces of music can go for 40 minutes and require up to 50 page turns, including back turns for repeat passages. Silent onstage communication is key, and each pianist has their own style of “nodding” to indicate a page turn which they need to practise with their page turner.
But like all performances, there are moments when things go wrong. “I was turning the page to get ready for the next page, but the draft wind from the turn caused the spare pages to fall off the stand,” Mr Titterton said, “Luckily I was able to catch them and put them back.”
Most page turners are piano students or up-and-coming concert pianists, although Ms Raspopova has once asked her husband to help her out on stage.
“My husband is the worst page turner,” she laughed. “He’s interested in the music, feeling every note, and I have to say: ‘Turn, turn!’ Robert is the best page turner I’ve had in my entire life.”
1. What should Titterton be able to do to be a page turner?A.Read music. |
B.Play the piano. |
C.Sing songs. |
D.Fix the instruments. |
A.Counting the pages. |
B.Recognizing the “nodding”. |
C.Catching falling objects. |
D.Performing in his own style. |
【推荐3】The 2020 Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to former U.S. Poet Laureate(桂冠诗人)Louise Gluck. The prize committee cited “her unique poetic voice that with plain beauty makes individual existence universal”. Gluck is the first American woman to win the award since Toni Morrison in 1993. Gluck, 77, joins a list of literary giants and previous Nobelists who include, in this century, Canadian short-story master Alice Munro, Chinese magical-realist Mo Yan, etc.
Gluck’s work includes 12 collections of poetry and a few volumes of essays on literary writing. “All are characterized by a striving for clarity(清晰). Childhood and family life, the close relationship with parents and siblings, is a theme that has remained central to her,” Anders Olsson, the chairman of the Nobel Committee for Literature, said. “She seeks the universal, and in this she takes inspiration from myths and classical motifs,” Olsson added, citing her 2006 collection Averno, which the committee described as “masterly” for its “visionary interpretation of the myth of Persephone’s (珀尔塞福涅) fall into hell in the captivity (囚禁) of Hades(哈得斯), the god of death”.
What do Gluck’s poems mainly focus on?
A.Daily life. | B.Nature. |
C.Careers. | D.Classical myths. |
【推荐1】Today, poetry and science are often considered to be mutually exclusive career paths. But that wasn’t always the case. The mathematician A da Lovelace and the physicist James Clerk Mahwah were both accomplished poets. The poet John Keats was a licensed surgeon. Combining the two practices fell out of favor in the 1800s. But translating research into lyrics, haiku, and other poetic forms is resurging (再现) among scientists as they look for alternative ways to inspire others with their findings.
“Poetry is a great tool for questioning the world,” says Sam Illingworth, a poet and a geoscientist who works at the University of Western Australia. Through workshops and a new science-poetry journal, called Consilience, Illingworth is helping scientists to translate their latest results into poems that can attract appreciation from those outside of their immediate scientific field.
Stephany Mazon, a scientist from the University of Helsinki in Finland, joined one of Illingworth’s workshops. In the workshop, she was grouped with other scientists and tasked with writing a haiku, a 17-syllable-long poem, which spotlighted water, a fluid that featured in all of the group members’ research projects. “It was a lot of fun, and surprisingly easy to write the poem,” Mazon says. She plans to continue writing. “We do a disservice (伤害) to ourselves to think that scientists can’t be artistic and that art can’t be use a to communicate scientific ideas,” Mazon says.
That viewpoint is echoed by Illingworth, who thinks science communication initiatives are too often dominated by public lectures with their hands-off PowerPoint slides. “Actually, when science communication involves writing and sharing poems, it invites a two-way dialogue between experts and nonexperts,” he says. Scientist-poet Manjula Silva, an educator at Imperial College London, agrees. Poetry provides a way to translate complex scientific concepts into a language that everyone can understand, Silva says.
Scientists and poets are both trying to understand the world and communicate that understanding with others. The distinction between scientists and poets is less than people might think. We’re all just people with hopefully really interesting things to say and to share.
What does Illingworth think of the dominant ways of science communication?A.Conventional. | B.Effective. | C.Innovative. | D.Complex. |
【推荐2】A FEW SIMPLE FORMS OF ENGLISH POEMS
There are various reasons why people compose poetry. Some poems tell a story or describe a certain image in the reader’s mind. Others try to convey certain feelings such as joy and sorrow. The distinctive characteristics of poetry often include economical use of words, descriptive and vivid language, integrated imagery, literary devices such as similes and metaphors, and arrangement of words, lines, rhymes, and rhythm. Poets use many different forms of poetry to express themselves. Now we will look at a few of the simpler forms.
Some of the first poems a young child learns in English are nursery rhymes. They are usually the traditional poems or folk songs. The language of these rhymes, like Poem A, is to the point but has a storyline. Many children enjoy nursery rhymes because they rhyme, have a strong rhythm, and often repeat the same words. The poems may not make sense and even seem contradictory, but they are easy to learn and recite. By playing with the words in nursery rhymes, children learn about language.
One of the simplest kinds of poem is the “list poem”, which contains a list of things, people, ideas, or descriptions that develop a particular theme. List poems have a flexible line length and repeated phrases which give both a pattern and a rhythm to the poem. Some rhyme (like B and C), while others do not. Another simple form of poem that amateurs can easily write is the cinquain, which is made up of five lines. With these, you can convey a strong picture or a certain mood in just a few words. Look at the example (D).
Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry that consists of 17 syllables. It has a format of three lines, containing 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively. It is not a traditional form of English poetry, but is very popular with English writers. It is easy to write and, like the cinquain, can give a clear picture and create a special feeling using very few words. The haiku poem (E) on the right is a translation from Japanese, which shows a moment in the life of a delicate butterfly.
English speakers also enjoy poems from China, those from the Tang Dynasty in particular. A lot of Tang poetry has been translated into English, such as this one (F).
With so many different forms of poetry to choose from, you may eventually want to write poems of your own. Give it a try!
A | Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird. If that mockingbird won’t sing, Papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring. If that diamond ring turns to brass, Papa’s gonna buy you a looking glass. If that looking glass gets broke, Papa’s gonna buy you a billy goat. If that billy goat won’t pull, Papa’s gonna buy you a cart and bull. | |
B | Only One Mother Hundreds of stars in the pretty sky, Hundreds of shells on the shore together, Hundreds of birds that go singing by, Hundreds of lambs in the sunny weather. Hundreds of dewdrops to greet the dawn, Hundreds of bees in the purple clover, Hundreds of butterflies on the lawn, But only one mother the wide world over. George Cooper | |
C | LIFE Life can be good,Life can be bad, Life is mostly cheerful, but sometimes sad Life can be dreams, Life can be great thoughts Life can mean a person, Sitting in court. | |
D | Brother Beautiful, athletic Teasing, shouting, laughing Friend and enemy too Mine | |
E | A fallen blossom Is coming back to the branch. Look, a butterfly! | |
F | Where she awaits her husband On and on the river flows. Never looking back, Transformed into stone. Day by day upon the mountain top, wind and rain revolve. Should the traveller return, this stone would utter speech. Wang Jian |
Type of poem | Characteristics | Example | Topics and poetic devices |
Nursery rhyme | • concrete but creative language | A | • love between father and baby • rhymes, repetition |
List poem | B | ||
C | |||
Cinquain | D | ||
Haiku | E | ||
Tang poem | F |
Creativity Is the Mother of Invention By Sha Azam Siddiqui | |
The world in which we live in This beautiful place which we belong to It’s so beautiful and so colorful But we always lack to see beauty of it and we continue to live the life which is so regretful This is the one life we have We have to live it to the fullest Not with happenings or desires of others But with the intention which truly inspires us. We have to live this life We have to create this life | This life is ours and only ours We need to realize this first It’s said that creativity is the mother of invention But it depends solely on individual intention If we are clear with our own destination It doesn’t matter then how much we get rejection Live this life as if you were the King Spend the luxuries as if you were the Queen It all starts with the only Intention If we just keep on thinking Then there is no end for this perspiration. |
Creativity is the key to a bright future. We live in a