TEXT FOUR

Just as Norman Mailer, John Updike and Philip Roth were at various times regarded as the greatest American novelist since the second world war, John Ashbery and Robert Lowell vied for the title of greatest American poet. Yet the two men could not be more different. Lowell was a public figure who engaged with politics—in 1967 he marched shoulder-to-shoulder with Mailer in protest against the Vietnam war, as described in Mailer's novel “The Armies of the Night”. Lowell took on substantial themes and envisioned himself as a tragic, heroic figure, fighting against his own demons. Mr Ashbery's verse, by contrast, is more beguilingly casual. In his hands, the making of a poem can feel like the tumbling of dice on a table top. Visible on the page is a delicately playful strewing of words, looking to engage with each other in a shyly puzzled fashion. And there is an element of Dada-like play in his unpredictability of address with its perpetual shifting of tones.

Lowell, who died in 1977 at the age of 60, addressed the world head on. By contrast, Mr Ashbery, who celebrated his 80th birthday earlier this year, glances wryly at the world and its absurdities. In this edition of his later poems, a substantial gathering of verses selected from six volumes published over the past 20 years, his poetry does not so much consist of themes to be explored as comic routines to be improvised. He mocks the very idea of the gravity of poetry itself. His tone can be alarmingly inconsequential, as if the reader is there to be perpetually wrong-footed. He shifts easily from the elevated to the work-a-day. His poems are endlessly digressive and there are often echoes of other poets in his writings, though these always come lightly at the reader, as though they were scents on the breeze.

Lowell wrote in strict formal measures; some of his last books consisted of entire sequences of sonnets. Mr Ashbery can also be partial to particular forms of verse, though these tend to be of a fairly eccentric kind—the cento (a patchwork of other poets' works), for example, and the pantoum (a Malaysian form, said to have been introduced to 19th-century Europe by Victor Hugo). Often he writes in a free-flowing, conversational manner that depends for its success upon the fact that the ending of lines is untrammelled by any concern about whether or not they scan. Within many of his poems, there often seems to be a gently humorous antagonism between one stanza and the next. Mr Ashbery likes using similes in his poetry. This is often the poet's stock-in-trade, but he seems to single them out in order to send up the very idea of the simile in poetry, as in “Violets blossomed loudly/ like a swear word in an empty tank”.

Life, for Lowell, was a serious matter, just as he was a serious man. Mr Ashbery's approach, as evinced by his poetry, is more that of a gentle shrug of amused bewilderment. Unlike Lowell's, his poems are neither autobiographical nor confessional. He doesn't take himself that seriously. “Is all of life a tepid housewarming?” For a poet this is a tougher question to answer than you might think.

1.

The word “substantial” (Line 4, Paragraph 1) most probably means_____.

[A] serious

[B] big

[C] important

[D] real

2. The last words of Lowell mean that_____.

[A] the world should go forward without stopping.

[B] the world should not mourn for him.

[C] the world should forget him totally.

[D] the world should go on its path for a bright future.

3. Which one of the following is NOT the characteristics of Ashbery’s poetry?

[A] Some lines are borrowed from the other poets’ works.

[B] Stanzas are different from each other in one poem.

[C] Words are scattered casually in his poetry.

[D] Tones are continuously changing from the highbrow to the common.

4. Mr. Ashbery’s similes in poetry are different from that of the other poets in that_____.

[A] he likes to single them out.

[B] he uses them in an eccentric way.

[C] he uses simile for simile.

[D] he uses simile to express his complex thought.

5. Why the author think the question Ashbery raised is a tougher one for a poet than we might think?

[A] Because a poet looks at things in a very complicated way.

[B] Because a poet takes life seriously.

[C] Because this question is a difficult one.

[D] Because the theme of life is worth thinking for a poet.

篇章剖析：

这篇文章介绍了美国诗人Ashbery和其诗歌的特点，文章虽然是以两个诗人对比的形式写作的，但是却对Ashbery着墨偏多，另外一个诗人洛厄尔只是一个陪衬而已。第一段讲述了两个诗人竞争美国最伟大诗人的称号；第二段第三段都是对两位诗人作品特点的描述；第四段讲述他们对生活的不同态度。

词汇注释：

vie v.竞争 envision vt.想象, 预想

dice n.骰子 strew vt.散播, 点缀, 撒满

wryly adv.挖苦地, 表情冷漠地 improvise v.临时准备

digressive adj.离题的, 枝节的 cento n. 杂烩, 摘录

pantoum n.(根据隔行同韵的马来诗体改编的) 由隔行同韵的四行诗节组成的诗

untrammel adj.自由自在的, 无阻碍的 tepid adj.微温的, 温热的, 不太热烈的