2 . Not Waving but Drowning

Stevie Smith (1902-1971)

Nobody heard him, the dead man, but still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought, and not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking, and now he's dead.

It must have been too cold for him, his heart gave away, they said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always （Still the dead one lay moaning）.

I was much too far out all my life, and not waving but drowning.

‘Not Waving But Drowning’ by Stevie Smith describes the emotional situation of a speaker whose true sufferings go unnoticed by all those around her. The poem begins with the speaker stating that there is a dead man who is not really dead. He is not dead because his story has more to offer to the world. His death came at the hands of apathy (冷漠). The speaker knows this to be true as she is struggling out in the ocean waters. She’s trying desperately to get someone’s attention but all the onlookers believe her to be “waving” rather than “drowning”. Then the speaker criticizes the emotionless reaction of the beach-goers by describing their words regarding the dead man. They see him, attempt to recall something about his life, and then declare him dead without ceremony They believe that it must have been “too cold” for him and that his heart gave out. The speaker continues to say that it has always been “too cold” for her. She has always been too far out to the sea to make people understand her, especially now when she needs understanding the most.

On the surface the poem is about a man who drowns because his movements are mistaken for friendly waving. Taken less literally, however, it speaks to the pain of being misunderstood and the frequent failure of communication between human beings, closely related to which is its potential suggestion of mental illness. That is, the poem can be taken as an extended metaphor (暗喻) for the specific pain of diseases like depression, which makes the man feel like “drowning” yet unable to effectively ask for help. It’s worth noting here that Smith herself struggled with depression for much of her life, and her own experience likely informed the poem. The man’s mistaken gestures, in this reading, indicate the divide between appearance and reality, between how people dealing with such illness are feeling inside and how the world sees them or how they present themselves to the world.

1. What’s the first paragraph mainly about?

A．An introduction of the poet.	B．The explanation of the poem’s content.
C．The appreciation of the poem's images.	D．An analysis of the poem's creation background.

2. What does the underlined phrase “without ceremony” possibly mean?

A．Casually.

B．Definitely.

C．Formally.

D．Violently.

3. According to the passage, what’s to blame for the man’s death in the poem?

A．His inner desire for death.	B．His misleading gestures for help.
C．His being drowned for so long a time.	D．His failed communication with people around.

4. What can we conclude from this passage?

A．People usually believe what they see.

B．People can't turn a blind eye to whoever is in trouble.

C．People should re late to what those in need truly need.

D．People with mental illnesses must help themselves out.

4 . Working for a big company in London on a salary (薪水)of over £100,000, you might expect Grayden Reece-Smith to have a luxurious (奢侈)lifestyle, going on expensive holidays or driving a sports car around south London, where he lives. In fact, the 28-year-old lives a very different existence from his colleagues. He gives away everything he earns over £42,000–a figure that he thought he could comfortably live on.

Over the past five years, Reece-Smith has handed over more than £250,000 to organizations such as International Care Ministries, which helps poor families in the Philippines, and the Against Malaria Foundation. He is part of a growing number of young professionals described as “effective altruists”. Effective altruists typically donate regularly to a charity which they think will have a great impact (影响). Some change careers to make more money, which can then be given away.

Reece-Smith considered working in the charity sector after graduating from university, but thought that he could make a bigger difference by donating a large part of his salary. He had volunteered as a teacher at a school in Tanzania, but then realized that earning and giving would be more effective. “The cost of my flights there could have paid the salaries of two teachers for an entire year,” he says. Instead, he could “stay at home, living a nice life and still make a huge difference in the world”.

He is not mean with money-last year he went to Cuba on holiday, and spent several thousand pounds on a new sofa. But his lifestyle isn’t as luxurious as some of the people he works with. “I usually don’t buy supermarket-branded food products, but I don’t own a car. Other people on my salary might have a bigger house. Some of my colleagues have four-bedroom houses, but we only bought what we needed-a two-bedroom flat.£42,000 is more than enough to live on and still save,” he says.

1. How much money does Grayden spend on donation every year?

A．Less than £42,000.	B．Over £100.000.
C．£50,000.	D．Any income over £42,000.

2. What may an “effective altruist” do according to the text?

A．Donate to impactful charities.	B．Make more money to enjoy lives.
C．Create a good public image.	D．Enter a teaching profession.

3. Why did Grayden decide to donate money but not work in the charity sector?

A．To access his inner life.	B．To create a stronger effect.
C．To give away all of his salary.	D．To be a teacher at a school.

4. What can be inferred about Grayden from the text?

A．He leads an expensive lifestyle.	B．He buys food produced by supermarkets.
C．He lives in a four-bedroom house.	D．He balances his life and donation.

5 . T. S. Eliot wrote of “Distracted from distraction by distraction /Filled with fancies and empty of meaning.” T. S. Eliot never had a smartphone.

Neither did I for a long time. No Facebook account; not even email. But according to my date of manufacture, I’m supposed to be a digital native. Perhaps it’s because by the age of 20 I was living in the Welsh countryside with no signal and no Wi-Fi.

When I finally fell into the digital world, I fell hard. Unlike my friends for whom social media and mobile technology had grown and flowered around them, for me it was a sudden immersion. I got Facebook, Twitter and Gmail accounts at the same time that I got an iPhone 4. I would check my phone; five minutes later I would check my phone again. I was addicted and it started to affect my relationships with friends and family

One night, without a word, I abandoned my iPhone and bought a Nokia 3310 and became the talk of the town. Soon I became aware that not only had I stolen secret time back from the hurried days, but somehow a secret space as well. I could stretch out, free to think again, to be wholly creative and to learn meaningfully.

But, wherever I went I got bloody lost. Wandering blindly around London, only to miss appointments, became a frequent pastime (消遣). What did we do before Google Maps? I was useless. The change was worth it, though. I’ll sound like an overstatement but I think it changed my life. My choices are broader and healthier because I’m not being screamed at all day.

I bought a new Samsung phone last week. I had been scared of the rate of progress, crying: “Stop the train! Stop the madness.” But I want to be part of building the future, and to do that, you’ve got to swim in contemporary waters. Rejecting the modern world doesn’t help anyone. It slows you down and I need to be efficient. Time will tell whether I’ve mastered the wisdom to reject constantly checking my phone.

1. What can be learned about the author when she lived in the Welsh countryside?

A．She read a lot of T. S. Eliot.	B．She had no friends to talk with.
C．She had no access to the Internet.	D．She was afraid of the digital world.

2. Why did the author buy the Nokia 3310?

A．She thought she needed a spare phone.	B．She found her iPhone stopped working.
C．She wanted to attract people’s attention.	D．She hoped to break her smartphone addiction.

3. What happened after the author used the Nokia 3310?

A．She led a simple and healthy life.	B．She found her life was in a mess.
C．She spent more time with her friends.	D．She became an example for other people.

4. For what purpose did the author buy the Samsung phone?

A．To seek wisdom.	B．To stop her madness.
C．To keep pace with the times.	D．To get back to the real world.

6 . Like flavors of ice cream, people have different tastes and preferences for music. You need to map out your playlist based on the theme of your essay. Here are a few film scores for different themes, you can decide which is the best music for writing:

Nutmeg by Alexandre Desplat

Fear Will Find You by Hans Zimmer

The Station Inspector by Howard Shore

If you are a student writing a reflection paper about a movie your teacher asked you to watch, listening to its film score would get your creative juices flowing. Besides, you can even add what you feel about the music and its impact on the movie. So less work for you and more additional points on your paper.

Some would be happy to listen to anything while others are more specific. For example, there are people who would happily listen to any music while some are more particular and prefer classical music to jazz. If you are one of them, here are a few classical pieces you can listen to while writing:

Tambourin chinois, Op. 3 by Fritz Kreisler

The Gadfly Suite, Op. 97a: VIII. Romance by Dmitri Shostakovich

The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams

The number one problem that writers complain about is writer’s block. Even if you are not a professional and just writing a 2000-word research paper, you can still experience writer’s block and not know how to get started. With that, here are a few songs to get you all pumped up to write:

Iron Maiden’s by The Trooper

Run Boy Run by Woodkid

Knights of Cydonia by Muse

If popular songs are not your thing, then you can just listen to famous scores from movies.

1. Which is classical music?

A．Nutmeg.	B．Run Boy Run.
C．Iron Maiden’s.	D．The Lark Ascending.

2. Whose work will you choose to get motivated with your writing?

A．Hans Zimmer.	B．Howard Shore.
C．Muse.	D．Fritz Kreisler.

3. What is the author’s advice for people who don’t like popular songs?

A．Listen to famous songs from movies.

B．Listen to songs recommended by others.

C．Listen to songs sung by famous singers.

D．Listen to songs created by famous artists.

7 . Last week, I sent the same request to ChatGPT, the latest artificial-intelligence chatbot from OpenAI. “Upon the Firth of Forth, a bridge doth stand,” it began. In less than a minute, the program had created in full a rhyming Shakespearean sonnet (莎士比亚十四行诗). Tools like ChatGPT seem poised to change the world of poetry — and so much else — but poets also have a lot to teach us about artificial intelligence. If algorithms (算法) are getting good at writing poetry, it’s partially because poetry was always an algorithmic business.

Even the most rebellious (叛逆的) poets follow more rules than they might like to admit. When schoolchildren are taught to imitate the structure of sonnet, they are effectively learning to follow algorithmic constraints. Should it surprise us that computers can do so, too?

But considering how ChatGPT works, its ability to follow the rules for sonnets seems a little more impressive. No one taught it these rules. It is based on a newer kind of AI known as a large language model (LLM). To put it simply, LLMs analyze large amounts of human writing and learn to predict what the next word in a string of text should be, based on context. One frequent criticism of LLMs is that they do not understand what they write; they just do a great job of guessing the next word.

When a private verse by Dickinson makes us feel like the poet speaks directly to us, we are experiencing the effects of a technology called language. Poems are made of paper and ink — or, these days, electricity and light. There is no one “inside” a Dickinson poem any more than one by ChatGPT. Of course, every Dickinson poem reflects her intention to create meaning. When ChatGPT puts words together, it does not intend anything. Some argue that writings by LLMs therefore have no meaning, only the appearance of it. If I see a cloud in the sky that looks like a giraffe, I recognize it as an accidental similarity. In the same way, this argument goes, we should   regard the writings of ChatGPT as merely imitating real language, meaningless and random as cloud shapes.

When I showed my friends the sonnet by ChatGPT, they called it “soulless and barren.” Despite following all the rules for sonnets, the poem is predictable. But is the average sonnet by a human any better? If we now expect computers to write not just poems but good poems, then we have set a much higher bar.

1. What is the main idea of paragraph 1 and paragraph 2?

A．ChatGPT will make a difference to poetry based on algorithms.

B．There is no doubt that AI can copy the grammatical rules of poetry.

C．Poetry guidelines provide a possibility for AI’s poetry writing.

D．There is a similarity between algorithms and poetry.

2. How does ChatGPT write poems?

A．ChatGPT is trained to follow the rules by LLMs.

B．ChatGPT can analyze and predict human languages.

C．ChatGPT is technologically supported by LLMs.

D．ChatGPT itself learn to follow the rules.

3. Why does the author mention Dickinson and cloud in paragraph 4?

A．He talks about cloud to describe the meaninglessness of AI’s poetry.

B．He tells of Dickinson to describe the meaninglessness AI’s poetry.

C．He mentions cloud to suggest its close relationship with AI’s poetry.

D．He refers to Dickinson to suggest her close relationship with AI’s poetry.

4. Which of the following can best describe the author’s attitude towards AI poetry?

A．Acceptable and favorable	B．Amazed and admiring
C．Indifferent and uncaring	D．Doubtful and uneasy

8 . Whitman was one of the most original and inspiring American poets, well known for his art and his role as a poet. He devoted himself to poetry praising the native American’s experience. As America’s first epic poem, Leaves of Grass ran nine editions with more than 400 poems all written in free forms, that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. The tide implies rebirth, renewal, or green life. As Whitman once said, “Leaves of Grass was the outcropping of my own emotional and other personal nature — an attempt, from first to last, to put a person, a human being freely, fully and truly on record.”

For Whitman, science, democracy (民主) and spirituality (灵性) were the three things that underlay the structure of modern poetry. Whitman tried to combine the world of science, the democracy and the spiritual feeling of life into his poetry. For Whitman, the poetic form should be free. Therefore, he threw aside the traditional form and had his own form. Both the form and content of his poems are revolutionary. With its frequent use of oral language and everyday events, his poem represented a turning point in the history of American poetry — poetry fashioned out of specially American experience in a clear American idiom. Whitman’s unique poetic creation has developed a very significant tradition in American poetry.

In his poems, he celebrated new America rather than regretted it. He was against slavery, idolized (崇拜) Lincoln, supported strikes, and combined the ideal of the common people and that of the ragged individual.

1. Which of the following is RIGHT?

A．Whitman called on others to write poems like him.

B．Whitman praised the native rich Americans.

C．Whitman wrote poems to tell about the native American’s experience.

D．He wanted to become a great poet.

2. ________ in Whitman’s poems.

A．There are fixed beats and regular rhyme schemes

B．We could see rebirth, renewal or green life

C．We could only see science, wars and damage

D．There is no emotional nature

3. Whitman invented his own poem form ________.

A．by giving up the traditional form

B．without colloquial (通俗的) language

C．by telling English history

D．against poetic creation

4. What does the underlined phrase “the ragged individual” mean?

A．The rich people.

B．The poor people.

C．The poem writers.

D．The American lawyers.

9 . Have you ever listened to the sound of a raindrop? You might call the small sounds earth songs. Is it possible to catch earth songs, to put them into words?

Long ago, poets in Japan listened, watched, and did catch the beauty of the earth’s songs. They did this with the tiniest poems in the world, called haiku. A haiku is a poem that is just three lines and seventeen syllables long. And the poets who wrote them watched and listened, not only with their eyes and ears, but also with their hearts!

In their haiku, the early Japanese poets caught the colors, sounds, and beauties of the seasons of the year. They sang of their islands’ beauties. Their miniature poems were not meant to fully describe a scene or to explain it but rather were a flash impression.

The old poets are not the only writers of haiku. Today Japanese farmers, shopkeepers, grandparents, and students write it, and because of its strong appeal, haiku is written in many other countries throughout the world.

Interestingly enough, Japanese poetry has had a long and colorful history. In the prehaiku period in the early eighth century, Japanese poets wrote katauta, poems in a question-­and-­answer form, using two people. Each three­-line verse (诗节) contained about seventeen syllables that could be delivered easily in one breath — just as one would naturally ask or answer a question. This has remained the basic pattern for traditional Japanese poetry throughout the centuries.

Another form that appeared was the tanka, which contained five lines and thirty-­one syllables (5-7-5-7-7), written by either one or two persons. From that evolved (发展) the renga, which contained more than one verse, or link. Written by three or more people, it could have as many as 100 links! The first verse of the renga introduced a subject. It had three lines and was called the hokku, or starting verse. Renga parties became a great pleasure.

Around 1450, haikai no renga became popular. This style of linked verse contained puns (双关) and was humorous and amusing. The opening three lines were still called a hokku, and from haikai and hokku the term haiku evolved.

1. What does the underlined word “miniature” in Paragraph 3 mean?

A．Easy.	B．Little.
C．Detailed.	D．Selected.

2. We know from the text that katauta ________ .

A．was humorous and amusing

B．contained thirty-­one syllables

C．could have as many as 100 links

D．was written in a question-­and­-answer form

3. According to the text, what was the main activity at a renga party?

A．Creating a group poem.

B．Changing haiku into tanka.

C．Studying the history of renga.

D．Competing to write earth songs.

4. Information in this text would be of most value to readers who want to ________ .

A．teach how to write haiku

B．research the history of haiku

C．compare Japanese and American poetry

D．find suggestions about hosting a renga party