VOA慢速英语2013 Americans Choose Their Favorite Poems

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Americans Choose Their Favorite Poems

Welcome  to This Is America with VOA Learning English. This week, we bring you some of the poems that Americans like best.

April is National Poetry Month in the United States.  The Academy of American Poets started the celebration in 1996. The goal was to help more Americans add poetry to their lives.

The academy chose April as National Poetry Month because of a line in a poem. T.S. Eliot called April “the cruelest month” in his poem “The Waste Land.” And many Americans think April is the cruelest month. They must pay their income taxes by April fifteenth.

National Poetry Month brings together publishers, booksellers, poetry groups, libraries, schools and poets around the country. They encourage people to write, read, and listen to poetry.

In the southern state of Florida, the O, Miami Poetry Festival tries to bring a poem to every one of the 2.5 million people who live in the area. The group has dropped poems out of airplanes, sewn them into clothes, and put them on every bus in the city.

Poetry is very popular in the United States.  America even has a chief poet, known as the Poet Laureate.  Robert Pinsky was the Poet Laureate from 1997 until 2000.  He started the Favorite Poem Project, to find out which poems Americans liked best.  Thousands of Americans wrote to Mr. Pinsky about their favorite poems.  He chose two hundred poems by poets from the United States and from many other countries. 

The poems are included in a book called “Americans’ Favorite Poems.”   It was edited by Robert Pinsky and Maggie Dietz. 

We will read five of poems from the book by American poets.

Our first poem is by Black Elk¹. He was a famous spiritual leader of the Oglala Lakota Native American tribe.  He took part in two famous battles against American troops during the late eighteen hundreds.  At the end of his life, he told about a number of his tribe’s ceremonies and ideas about life.  Among these was the poem called “Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle.” 

Everything the Power of the World does

is done in a circle.  The sky is round,

and I have heard that the earth is round

like a ball, and so are all the stars.

The wind, in its greatest power, whirls.

Birds make their nests in circles,

For theirs is the same religion as ours.

The sun comes forth² and goes down again

in a circle.  The moon does the same,

And both are round. Even the seasons

form a great circle in their changing,

and always come back again to where they were.

The life of man is a circle from childhood to childhood,

and so it is in everything where power moves.

Our next poem chosen as one of Americans’ favorites is by Rita Dove. She was the youngest person and the first African-American ever named Poet Laureate of the United States.  She served from 1993 to 1995. 

Rita Dove is a professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.  Many of her poems are based on the lives of her family, especially her grandparents.  Dove often writes about the experience of being a mother, like in this poem, called “Daystar.”

She wanted a little room for thinking:

but she saw diapers steaming on the line,

a doll slumped³ behind the door.

So she lugged⁴ a chair behind the garage to sit out the children’s naps.

Sometimes there were things to watch –

the pinched armor of a vanished cricket,

a floating maple⁵ leaf.  Other days

she stared until she was assured

when she closed her eyes

she’d see only her own vivid blood.

She had an hour, at best, before Liza appeared

pouting⁶ from the top of the stairs.

And just what was mother doing

out back with the field mice? Why,

Building a palace.  Later

that night when Thomas rolled over and

lurched into her, she would open her eyes

and think of the place that was hers

for an hour – where

she was nothing,

pure nothing, in the middle of the day.

Robert Frost was perhaps the most popular and beloved of twentieth century American poets.  So it is not surprising that six of his poems are included in the book “Americans’ Favorite Poems.”

He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry four times.  He often wrote about the land and people of the northeastern American states. 

His poems combine images of nature with ideas about how to live one’s life.  This one is called “The Road Not Taken.”  It is one of his most famous poems.

Two roads diverged⁷ in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent⁸ in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy⁹ and wanted wear;

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had  trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Langston Hughes published more than 30 books.  He started with poetry and then expanded into novels, short stories, plays and personal memories.

He was one of the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance¹⁰ of the 1920s. During the Harlem Renaissance, African-American literature, art and music grew quickly in New York City. 

Langston Hughes continued writing into the 1960s.  His work often spoke¹¹ plainly about the difficult lives of black people living in big cities.

This poem is called “Mother to Son.”

Well son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks¹² in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor –

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

‘Cause yo u finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now –

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin,’

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Edna Saint Vincent Millay’s poetry is also included in “Americans’ Favorite Poems.”  She was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1923.

She was also famous for the free way she lived her life and for her many lovers.

Here is one of her poems about love, called “Sonnet Twenty-four.”

When you, that at this moment are to me

Dearer than words on paper, shall depart,

And be no more the warder of my heart,

Whereof again myself shall hold the key;

And bed no more – what now you seem to be –

The sun, from which all excellences¹³ start

In a round nimbus, nor a broken dart¹⁴

Of moonlight, even, splintered on the sea;

I shall remember only of this hour –

And weep somewhat, as now you see me weep –

The pathos¹⁵ of your love, that, like a flower,

Fearful of death yet amorous¹⁶ of sleep,

Droops¹⁷ for a moment and beholds¹⁸, dismayed,

The wind whereon its petals¹⁹ shall be laid.

Our program was written by Shelley Gollust.  Our poetry readers were Doug Johnson, Pat Bodnar, Steve Ember, Shep O’Neal and Barbara Klein.  I’m Kelly Jean Kelly. 

You can read and listen to our programs at learningenglish.voanews.com. Listen again next week for This Is America with VOA Learning English.