VOA慢速英语-AMERICAN MOSAIC - For Kay Ryan, Poetry Is 'the Most

HOST:

Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC¹ in VOA Special English.

(MUSIC)

I'm Doug Johnson. This week, a special poetry show:

We hear some songs of famous poems by France's First Lady Carla Bruni ...

Answer a question about American poet Emily Dickinson …

And tell about Kay Ryan, who begins serving as poet laureate of the United States this weekend.

(MUSIC)

Kay Ryan

HOST:

The United States has a new poet laureate, Kay Ryan. She will read some of her poetry Saturday at the National Book Festival on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Barbara Klein tells about the poet and her work.

BARBARA KLEIN:
　
Kay Ryan

Kay Ryan did not know she could be a writer until she had a brief talk with the universe. She was on a very long bicycle trip, from the West Coast to the East, in nineteen seventy-six. Riding through Colorado's Rocky Mountains, a question came to her: "Can I be a writer?" Ryan said the universe answered, also with a question: "Do you like it?"

She said yes, she liked it more than anything else. A few years later, she and her friends self-published her first book of poetry, "Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends."

Kay Ryan generally writes short poems that have short lines. The poems look simple on the page, and can be read simply, but they are complex in subject. They are often many things at once: funny, sad, troubling or mysterious, frightening yet hopeful. And her poetry has a wonderful playfulness with words. Kay Ryan says she likes to use rhyme in unexpected ways.

The poem, "Blandeur," is a good example. She read it at the Library of Congress in two thousand one.

KAY RYAN:

"If it please God,
let less happen.
Even out Earth's
rondure, flatten²
Eiger, blanden
the Grand Canyon³.
Make valleys
slightly higher,
widen fissures⁴
to arable⁵ land,
remand your
terrible glaciers⁶
and silence
their calving,
halving⁷ or doubling
all geographical⁸ features
toward the mean.
Unlean against our hearts.
Withdraw your grandeur⁹
from these parts."

Kay Ryan was born in nineteen forty-five in Southern California. She grew up in small valley and desert towns. She received both her bachelor's and master's degrees in English from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has taught English at the College of Marin in Kentfield, California, for more than thirty years. She lives in Marin County with Carol Adair, her partner of thirty years.

Kay Ryan says she believes poetry is "the most secret, the most private form of communication in language." She says she does not believe it will ever lose value no matter how many, or how few, readers it has.

Kay Ryan has advice for those who want to write poetry: Read a lot. Not necessarily poetry. Read science, philosophy, newspapers, murder mysteries and all kinds of things. And, she says it is good to have a love of language.

Kay Ryan has won many poetry prizes. She has also been compared to American poet Emily Dickinson, but dismisses the suggestion. Some of her favorite American poets include William Carlos Williams and Robert Frost. Her international favorites include Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska and Portuguese¹⁰ poet Fernando Pessoa.

Emily Dickinson

HOST:

Our listener question this week comes from Yemen. Sameer Taher Mahdi wants to know about what he calls the "strange life" of Emily Dickinson.
　
Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was born in eighteen thirty in the small Massachusetts town of Amherst. She lived and died in the same house where she was born. She received a good education. She studied philosophy, the Latin language, and the science of plants and rocks.

Emily's parents were important people in Amherst. Many famous visitors came to their house, and Emily met them. Her father was a well-known lawyer who was elected to Congress for one term.

Mister Dickinson believed that women should be educated. But he also believed a woman's one and only duty in life was to care for her husband and children. Emily once said: "He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they upset the mind. "

Emily Dickinson wrote more than one thousand seven hundred poems. There are three books of her letters. And there are many books about her life.

Some of her best poems were written between eighteen fifty-eight and eighteen sixty-two. Here is one of them.

I live with Him -- I see his face --
I go no more away
For Visitor -- or Sundown --
Death's single privacy
Dreams -- are well -- but Waking's better,
If One wake at Morn --
If One wake at Midnight better --
Dreaming -- of the Dawn --
This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to me --
The simple News that Nature told --
With tender Majesty¹¹

Although Emily Dickinson did not believe in organized religion, religious music of the time influenced the form of her poetry. She also used unusual words. She once wrote that the dictionary was her best friend. The English writer William Shakespeare, the Christian¹² holy book the Bible and nature also influenced her work.

Emily Dickinson's life was strange because the older she became the more she withdrew from the world. By her early thirties, she had stopped socializing almost completely. Within several years, she would not even open her door to visitors. She rarely left her house.

Emily Dickinson died in eighteen eighty-six at the age of fifty-five. She had made her sister Lavinia promise to burn all her writing but, luckily for us, that did not happen.

Very few of Emily Dickinson's poems were published when she was alive. She gained no fame until years after her death. Her complete works were published in nineteen fifty-five. She is now considered one of the world's great poets.

Carla Bruni

HOST:
　
Carla Bruni

We continue our poetry theme with an album of poems put to music. Italian-born Carla Bruni is well known for her career as a model and her recent marriage to French President Nicolas Sarkozy. But Miz Bruni also writes and sings music. Her second album is called "No Promises." It is her first album in English. The album has musical versions of eleven poems by some of the most important English and American poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Faith Lapidus plays three of these songs.

(MUSIC)

FAITH LAPIDUS:

That was "Those Dancing Days Are Gone," written by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. It is a good example of Carla Bruni's style. The singer says she sometimes felt guilty about repeating sentences in Yeats' poem since the poet did not repeat them in his original work. But she decided¹³ that Yeats would not have minded if she had sung the sung for him.

When she was planning this album, Carla Bruni thought she would combine songs she wrote with musical versions of these famous poems. But she said that the poetry reaches such a level of perfection¹⁴ that she only kept the poems. Here is "Lady Weeping at the Crossroads" by the poet W. H. Auden.

(MUSIC)

To make this album, Carla Bruni worked with her friend, British singer Marianne Faithfull, to improve her voice and diction. Faithfull also shared her knowledge of English and American poetry.We leave you with Carla Bruni's version of Emily Dickinson's poem "I Felt My Life With Both My Hands."

(MUSIC)

HOST:

I'm Doug Johnson. I hope you enjoyed our program today.

It was written by Dana Demange and Caty Weaver¹⁵ who was also the producer.

Join us again next week for AMERICAN MOSAIC, VOA's radio magazine in Special English.

 

1 mosaic   

n./adj.镶嵌细工的，镶嵌工艺品的，嵌花式的

参考例句：

• The sky this morning is a mosaic of blue and white.今天早上的天空是幅蓝白相间的画面。
• The image mosaic is a troublesome work.图象镶嵌是个麻烦的工作。

2 flatten   

v.把．．．弄平，使倒伏；使(漆等)失去光泽

参考例句：

• We can flatten out a piece of metal by hammering it.我们可以用锤子把一块金属敲平。
• The wrinkled silk will flatten out if you iron it.发皱的丝绸可以用熨斗烫平。

3 canyon   

n.峡谷，溪谷

参考例句：

• The Grand Canyon in the USA is 1900 metres deep.美国的大峡谷1900米深。
• The canyon is famous for producing echoes.这个峡谷以回声而闻名。

4 fissures   

n.狭长裂缝或裂隙( fissure的名词复数 )；裂伤；分歧；分裂v.裂开( fissure的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Rising molten rock flows out on the ocean floor and caps the fissures, trapping the water. 上升熔岩流到海底并堵住了裂隙，结果把海水封在里面。 来自辞典例句
• The French have held two colloquia and an international symposium on rock fissures. 法国已经开了两次岩石裂缝方面的报告会和一个国际会议。 来自辞典例句

5 arable   

adj.可耕的，适合种植的

参考例句：

• The terrain changed quickly from arable land to desert.那个地带很快就从耕地变成了沙漠。
• Do you know how much arable land has been desolated?你知道什么每年有多少土地荒漠化吗？

6 glaciers   

冰河，冰川( glacier的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Glaciers gouged out valleys from the hills. 冰川把丘陵地带冲出一条条山谷。
• It has ice and snow glaciers, rainforests and beautiful mountains. 既有冰川，又有雨林和秀丽的山峰。 来自英语晨读30分（高一）

7 halving   

n.对分，二等分，减半[航空、航海]等分v.把…分成两半( halve的现在分词 )；把…减半；对分；平摊

参考例句：

• You searched those halving your salary cut your enthusiasm. 你呈现，薪水减半降低了你的任务热情。 来自互联网
• Halving the repeater spacing made it possible to quadruple the bandwidth. 把增音机间隔缩小一半，就能使带宽增加三倍。 来自互联网

8 geographical   

adj.地理的；地区(性)的

参考例句：

• The current survey will have a wider geographical spread.当前的调查将在更广泛的地域范围內进行。
• These birds have a wide geographical distribution.这些鸟的地理分布很广。

9 grandeur   

n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华

参考例句：

• The grandeur of the Great Wall is unmatched.长城的壮观是独一无二的。
• These ruins sufficiently attest the former grandeur of the place.这些遗迹充分证明此处昔日的宏伟。

10 Portuguese   

n.葡萄牙人；葡萄牙语

参考例句：

• They styled their house in the Portuguese manner.他们仿照葡萄牙的风格设计自己的房子。
• Her family is Portuguese in origin.她的家族是葡萄牙血统。

11 majesty   

n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权

参考例句：

• The king had unspeakable majesty.国王有无法形容的威严。
• Your Majesty must make up your mind quickly!尊贵的陛下，您必须赶快做出决定！

12 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

13 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

14 perfection   

n.尽善尽美，无比精确

参考例句：

• Their works reach to a great height of perfection.他们的作品到了极完美的境地。
• The picture wants something of perfection.这幅画还有些不够完美。

15 weaver   

n.织布工；编织者

参考例句：

• She was a fast weaver and the cloth was very good.她织布织得很快，而且布的质量很好。
• The eager weaver did not notice my confusion.热心的纺织工人没有注意到我的狼狈相。