【推荐1】I began writing poems fifteen years ago while I was in college. One day I was in the library, working on a term paper, when I came across a book of contemporary poetry. I don’t remember the title of the book or any of the titles of the poems except one: “Frankenstein’s Daughter.” The poem was wild, almost rude, and nothing like the rhyme-and-meter poetry I had read in high school. I had always thought that poetry was flowery writing about sunsets and walks on the beach, but that library book contained direct and sometimes shocking poetry about dogs, junked cars, rundown houses, and TVs. I checked the book out, curious to read more.

Soon afterward, I started filling a notebook with my own poems. At first I was scared, partly because my poetry teacher, to whom this book is written for, was a serious and strict man who could see the errors in my poems. Also, I realized the seriousness of my devotion. I gave up geography to study poetry, which a good many friends said offered no future. I ignored them because I liked working with words, using them to reconstruct the past, which has always been a source of poetry for me.

When I first studied poetry, I was single-minded. I woke to poetry and went to bed with poetry. I memorized poems, read English poets because I was told they would help shape my poems, and read classical Chinese poetry because I was told that it would add clarity to my work. But I was most taken by the Spanish and Latin American poets, particularly Pablo Neruda. My favorites of his were the odes ― long, short-lined poems celebrating common things like tomatoes, socks and scissors. I felt joyful when I read these odes, and when I began to write my own poems, I tried to remain faithful to the common things of my childhood — dogs, alleys (小巷), my baseball mitt (手套) and the fruit of the valley, especially the orange. I wanted to give these things life, to write so well that my poems would express their beauty.

I also admired our own country’s poetry. I saw that our poets often wrote about places where they grew up or places that impressed them deeply. James Wright wrote about Ohio and West Virginia, Philip Levine about Detroit, Gary Snyder about the Sierra Nevadas and about Japan, where for years he studied Zen Buddhism (禅宗佛教). I decided to write about the San Joaquin Valley, where my hometown, Fresno, is located. Some of my poems are absolute observations and images of nature — the orange yards, the Kings River, the Sequoias (红杉). I fell in love with the valley, both its ugliness and its beauty, and quietly wrote poems about it to share with others.

【推荐2】About 43 years ago, spotted an advertisement in the paper for the YMCA wilderness program.     1     My first experience was a boat trip. I still have the images of sunrises and sunsets with all the beautiful colours on Lake of the Woods.

    2     Even now I can feel the cold water dripping down my arm as we sat in the boat pulling the paddles awkwardly through running water. It was my first experience in a boat and my arms became tired after many hours of paddling.

We stopped for lunch in the boat by gathering all the boats together.     3    

At night it was time to camp at our site picked out by our guide. There we learned to start campfires and cook some of our meals. This is where fell in love with noodles.     4     We cleaned up our mess and put up our tents and slept on the ground. We learned to carry the heavy packs to our next destination. I developed a sense of accomplishment and had arm muscles after that trip.

There were no phones, makeup, hair dryers... just us and the bush. We came from different backgrounds with different personalities and we all had to work together as a group.

    5    . I kept a journal from that second trip and often go back to it.

【推荐3】The popular smartphone application Instagram(照片分享) has changed the way we look at photography, even our world. The photo-worthy moments we share serve as an important function in cultivating the photographic artistic eye.

Instagram has got people to start noticing the art in their everyday life. It has also allowed us to share the artful moments in our lives with others. Clearly, making people focus on beautiful moments in their lives and how to share them is a positive takeaway from Instagram.

Not only has Instagram changed the way we look at things around us, but it has also changed the way people view professional photography. Instagram has turned everyone with a smartphone into an artist. Opening up art to the general community is a groundbreaking(创新的) aspect of this application. Making artistic attempts accessible for everyone to discover their artistic talents and explore creatively is something that has made people find the beauty in the everyday life. However, this accessibility has also created questioning around art and respect deserved by professional photography.

The art in a professional photograph versus(与…对抗) an Instagram can sometimes be hard to notice at a quick glance. But photographs taken by true professional photographers hold something that Instagram’s cannot match in terms of photographic quality, or advanced compositional knowledge.

This is not to say Instagram is a lesser art. Aesthetic qualities of art are a personal matter and how good an artwork is depends on personal preferences. Good is a very arbitrary term in the art world. For example, I may find one photo more pleasing than another, but not everyone has to agree with me.

The point I am trying to make is that professional photography should not be lost, but instead approached with a new, enhanced level of respect and admiration — despite how accessible, common and fun Instagram now makes the taking and sharing of photos.