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VOA慢速英语2013 AS IT IS 2013-06-22 U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey Gets Second Term

时间:2013-06-25 08:50:56

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AS IT IS 2013-06-22 U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey Gets Second Term

Hello again, and welcome back for more As It Is.

I’m June Simms with VOA Learning English.

Today, we hear about Natasha Tretheway’s appointment to a second term as Poet Laureate of the United States. The person who holds this position is charged with raising the national consciousness to a greater appreciation1 of poetry.

The Library of Congress announced earlier this month that it was appointing Natasha Trethewey to a second term as Poet Laureate of the United States. The Librarian of Congress praised the Mississippi’s native’s poems. He said they “dig beneath the surface of history … to explore the human struggles that we all face.”

VOA's Adam Phillips spoke2 with the Pulitzer Prize winning poet about her writing, her past, and her position as “the face of American poetry.”

Whenever the U.S. Poet Laureate is asked for a simple definition of a poet, she quotes the early 19th century British poet Percy Shelley. He said that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Natasha Trethewey agrees.

“I think that poems legislate3 the world for us because they not only reckon with the past, with our history as human beings, but they also help us to envision and imagine the better worlds that we are every day working to build. Poetry can do that for us.”

The nation's 19th Poet Laureate was born to a white father and a black mother in Mississippi in 1966. At that time, inter-racial marriage was still against the law. Her poetry often explores the way her personal history and that troubled period of American history reflect each other.   

She explores ideas about racial difference in her poem “Knowledge.” It was based on a Victorian drawing that shows several white male doctors performing an autopsy4 on a young woman who had drowned. But it also contains a line written by her father, who is also a poet.

…. In the drawing this is only the first cut,

a delicate wounding: and yet how easily

the anatomist’s blade opens a place in me,

like a curtain drawn5 upon a room in which

each learned man is my father

and I hear, again, his words - I study

my crossbreed child - misnomer6

and taxonomy, the language of zoology7. Here,

he is all of them: the preoccupied8 man -

an artist, collector of experience, the skeptic9 angling

his head, his thoughts tilting10 toward

what I cannot know;…

Trethewey says that when she hears her father read the line “I study my crossbreed child,” she feels like an object on display. This, she says, is partly because of the word ‘study.’

“I felt that I was sort of being examined under a microscope or looked at in a sort of scientific sort of way by a distant lens. But also because of the word ‘crossbreed.’ Because of course, in the (English) language, human beings can’t be ‘crossbreds.’ So the word itself implies something of animal husbandry.”

During her younger years, Natasha Trethewey wrote only fiction, not poetry. But that changed after her mother was murdered by an abusive second husband in 1985. Trethewey was 19 years old at the time.

“It seemed to me that poetry was the only way to reckon with that loss and what I was feeling.”

The poem “What is Evidence” is from “Native Guard,” the collection of Trethewey’s poems that earned her the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. It brings to mind images of the abuse her mother suffered before she was killed.  

Not the fleeting11 bruises12 she’d cover

with makeup13, a dark patch as if imprint14

of a scope she’d pressed her eye too close to,

looking for a way out, nor the quiver

in the voice she’d steady, leaning/ into a pot of bones on the stove …

… Only the landscape of her body - splintered

clavicle, pierced temporal - her thin bones

settling a bit each day, the way all things do.

The Poet Laureate understands that many Americans think of poetry as overly complex, unclear, and self-involved. Growing up, she says, she did too.

“I couldn't enter the world of the poem and find myself inside of it. But then there was a particular poem that spoke to me at some point in my life and I realized it was just about finding the right poems.”

For Trethewey, the “right poem” was W.H. Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts.”

Auden talks about the way grief is so overpowering for mourners, while the world moves on without thought to the tragedy.

But Trethewey says everyone must find their own “right poem.”

“What poem is going to move you may not be the same one that moves me, but I am convinced that there is something out there for all of us that can make us love poetry. Sometimes we can read a poem about something that is nothing like anything we’ve experienced. And yet in there, the emotional strength of the poem is what connects us…the place of empathy.” 

Natasha Trethewey is the first Poet Laureate in almost 30 years to spend part of her term working out of the Poets Room. This is a richly decorated office within the Library of Congress’ Poetry and Literature Center in Washington, D.C. Trethewey says she has been stirred by the beauty of the Library as a people’s house of knowledge. And she enjoys having a chance to persuade others to discover the magic and the mystery of poetry.


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1 appreciation Pv9zs     
n.评价;欣赏;感谢;领会,理解;价格上涨
参考例句:
  • I would like to express my appreciation and thanks to you all.我想对你们所有人表达我的感激和谢意。
  • I'll be sending them a donation in appreciation of their help.我将送给他们一笔捐款以感谢他们的帮助。
2 spoke XryyC     
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说
参考例句:
  • They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
  • The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。
3 legislate 090zF     
vt.制定法律;n.法规,律例;立法
参考例句:
  • Therefore,it is very urgent to legislate for the right of privacy.因此,为隐私权立法刻不容缓。
  • It's impossible to legislate for every contingency.为每一偶发事件都立法是不可能的。
4 autopsy xuVzm     
n.尸体解剖;尸检
参考例句:
  • They're carrying out an autopsy on the victim.他们正在给受害者验尸。
  • A hemorrhagic gut was the predominant lesion at autopsy.尸检的主要发现是肠出血。
5 drawn MuXzIi     
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的
参考例句:
  • All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
  • Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。
6 misnomer nDtxR     
n.误称
参考例句:
  • Herbal"tea"is something of a misnomer because these drinks contain no tea at all.花草“茶”是一个误称,因为这类饮料里面根本不含茶。
  • Actually," Underground "is a misnomer,because more than half the shops are above ground.实际上,“ 地下 ” 这个名称用之不当,因为半数以上的店铺是在地面上的。
7 zoology efJwZ     
n.动物学,生态
参考例句:
  • I would like to brush up my zoology.我想重新温习一下动物学。
  • The library didn't stock zoology textbooks.这家图书馆没有动物学教科书。
8 preoccupied TPBxZ     
adj.全神贯注的,入神的;被抢先占有的;心事重重的v.占据(某人)思想,使对…全神贯注,使专心于( preoccupy的过去式)
参考例句:
  • He was too preoccupied with his own thoughts to notice anything wrong. 他只顾想着心事,没注意到有什么不对。
  • The question of going to the Mount Tai preoccupied his mind. 去游泰山的问题盘踞在他心头。 来自《简明英汉词典》
9 skeptic hxlwn     
n.怀疑者,怀疑论者,无神论者
参考例句:
  • She is a skeptic about the dangers of global warming.她是全球变暖危险的怀疑论者。
  • How am I going to convince this skeptic that she should attention to my research?我将如何使怀疑论者确信她应该关注我的研究呢?
10 tilting f68c899ac9ba435686dcb0f12e2bbb17     
倾斜,倾卸
参考例句:
  • For some reason he thinks everyone is out to get him, but he's really just tilting at windmills. 不知为什么他觉得每个人都想害他,但其实他不过是在庸人自扰。
  • So let us stop bickering within our ranks.Stop tilting at windmills. 所以,让我们结束内部间的争吵吧!再也不要去做同风车作战的蠢事了。
11 fleeting k7zyS     
adj.短暂的,飞逝的
参考例句:
  • The girls caught only a fleeting glimpse of the driver.女孩们只匆匆瞥了一眼司机。
  • Knowing the life fleeting,she set herself to enjoy if as best as she could.她知道这种日子转瞬即逝,于是让自已尽情地享受。
12 bruises bruises     
n.瘀伤,伤痕,擦伤( bruise的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • He was covered with bruises after falling off his bicycle. 他从自行车上摔了下来,摔得浑身伤痕。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • The pear had bruises of dark spots. 这个梨子有碰伤的黑斑。 来自《简明英汉词典》
13 makeup 4AXxO     
n.组织;性格;化装品
参考例句:
  • Those who failed the exam take a makeup exam.这次考试不及格的人必须参加补考。
  • Do you think her beauty could makeup for her stupidity?你认为她的美丽能弥补她的愚蠢吗?
14 imprint Zc6zO     
n.印痕,痕迹;深刻的印象;vt.压印,牢记
参考例句:
  • That dictionary is published under the Longman imprint.那本词典以朗曼公司的名义出版。
  • Her speech left its imprint on me.她的演讲给我留下了深刻印象。

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