NPR poetry Month: Vince Staples Reads His Favorite Twitter Poems

 

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Now it's time for more Twitter poetry. Here's one from Dave Paulsen in Minnesota.

DAVE PAULSEN: String cheese. You think you're so smart, shedding your skin like a cylindrical¹ reptile². Take heed³, though, little dairy product. Your changes are numbered.

MARTIN: Now we asked Dave if this poem came out of some kind of epic⁴ string cheese struggle, and he replied think of it as a statement about all of our struggles with hubris⁵ and an eventual⁶ vulnerability to change. All, of course, embodied⁷ within a tasty dairy snack. And there was a winky face emoji at the end. OK. Let's hear it again, this time through that filter of existential angst.

PAULSEN: String cheese. You think you're so smart, shedding your skin like a cylindrical reptile. Take heed, though, little dairy product. Your changes are numbered.

MARTIN: Thank you, Dave Paulsen. And it's not all fun and games and dairy products on our Twitter feed. There are a lot of thoughtful reflections on nature and identity which makes it a good time to turn it over to rapper Vince Staples⁸. He came to our studios for an interview which you will hear later this hour. But while he was here, we asked him to check out #NPRpoetry and read a couple of his favorites.

VINCE STAPLES: My name is Vince Staples, and I'm going to read a couple of poems for tweet poems for poetry month. This is by Jack⁹ Mayer M.D. (ph). (Reading) I am a god to the birds.

Great work. This is by Frooz Bashar (ph) (reading) we're mammals with money, people, mammals with money.

That [expletive] is deep.

MARTIN: Yes. That stuff is deep, although mammals with money is not really a Twitter poem. It's actually a quote from our colleague Sabri Ben-Achour in a Marketplace report - poetic¹⁰ though.

If you have any poetic insights, remember all this month you can tweet your original poems to us with a hashtag #NPRpoetry. We might just reach out and ask you to read it on the air.

1 cylindrical   

adj.圆筒形的

参考例句：

• huge cylindrical gas tanks 巨大的圆柱形贮气罐
• Beer cans are cylindrical. 啤酒罐子是圆筒形的。

2 reptile   

n.爬行动物；两栖动物

参考例句：

• The frog is not a true reptile.青蛙并非真正的爬行动物。
• So you should not be surprised to see someone keep a reptile as a pet.所以，你不必惊奇有人养了一只爬行动物作为宠物。

3 heed   

v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心

参考例句：

• You must take heed of what he has told.你要注意他所告诉的事。
• For the first time he had to pay heed to his appearance.这是他第一次非得注意自己的外表不可了。

4 epic   

n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的

参考例句：

• I gave up my epic and wrote this little tale instead.我放弃了写叙事诗，而写了这个小故事。
• They held a banquet of epic proportions.他们举行了盛大的宴会。

5 hubris   

n.傲慢，骄傲

参考例句：

• There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris.在技术方面自以为是会很危险。
• The very hubris of French claims alarmed the other powers.法国贪婪的胃口使其他大国惊恐不安。

6 eventual   

adj.最后的，结局的，最终的

参考例句：

• Several schools face eventual closure.几所学校面临最终关闭。
• Both parties expressed optimism about an eventual solution.双方对问题的最终解决都表示乐观。

7 embodied   

v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含

参考例句：

• a politician who embodied the hopes of black youth 代表黑人青年希望的政治家
• The heroic deeds of him embodied the glorious tradition of the troops. 他的英雄事迹体现了军队的光荣传统。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 staples   

n.（某国的）主要产品( staple的名词复数 )；钉书钉；U 形钉；主要部份v.用钉书钉钉住( staple的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The anvil onto which the staples are pressed was not assemble correctly. 订书机上的铁砧安装错位。 来自辞典例句
• I'm trying to make an analysis of the staples of his talk. 我在试行分析他的谈话的要旨。 来自辞典例句

9 jack   

n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克

参考例句：

• I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
• He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。

10 poetic   

adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的

参考例句：

• His poetic idiom is stamped with expressions describing group feeling and thought.他的诗中的措辞往往带有描写群体感情和思想的印记。
• His poetic novels have gone through three different historical stages.他的诗情小说创作经历了三个不同的历史阶段。