Poet Dean Young has dealt with impermanence( 无常)a lot in his career, but it's a particularly strong theme in Young's latest collection, Fall Higher.The new collection was published in April, just days after the poet received a life-saving heart transplant (移植) after about a decade of living with a weakening heart condition.
Young, whose work is often frank and rich with twisted humor, tells NPR's Renee Montaigne that as he recovers from operation, he's also slowly returning to his everyday writing habits.
"I'm getting back to it," Young says."Not with the sort of concentration and sort of flame that I look forward to in the future, but I am blackening some pages."
And on those blackened pages you'll find poems like " How Grasp Green," which carries themes of springtime and rebirth.It's one of the first poems Young has written since his transplant.
It's easy to spot clues (线索) to Young's awful health situation in the lines of his poetry. Fall Higher's "Vintage" opens with, "Because I will die soon, I fall asleep, during the lecture on the ongoing emergency." And the poem "-The Rhythms Pronounce Themselves Then Vanish—published in The /Vew Barker in February —opens with the CT scan that revealed Young's heart condition.
Young says "Rhythms" was written about the beginning of his illness.
"I had been having a lot of physical pain so that I could hardly walk a block.I got sent to a gastroenterologist and he did a series of tests, and then the tests came back to me and it was all heart related," he says." And the outlook wasn't good.
Hearts tend to come up a lot in poetry, and that's especially true of Young's work, which has clearly been influenced by the troubles of his own heart,
"A lot of times, it's not just a metaphor (比喻) ," Young says."For me, it's an actual concern because I've been living with this disease for over 10 years.My father died of heart problems when he was 49, so it's been a sort of shadowy concern for me my whole life.
But Young's poems also deal with more abstract matters of the heart.He wrote Fall Higher's, "Late Valentine" for his wife."We've been married since late November and most of it has been spent in the hospital," Young says of his marriage to poet Laurie Saurborn Young, who says " 'Late Valentine' is very sweet.
Today, Young says, his friends can't help but comment on how pink his cheeks have become—the result of a new heart and better circulation (循环).But Young wrote the poems of Fall Higher before the transplant, at a time when, at its weakest point, his old heart was pumping at 8 percent of what it should have been.
He was staring death in the face—but he was still able to look at his life and see art
in it.
Young's work also touches on themes of randomness and fate —two factors that contributed to him getting a second chance in the form of a new heart from a 22-year-old student.
"Everything in life is molecules (分子) bouncing against molecules," Young says, and having a successful transplant is no different." Somebody had to die; it had to be a fit; my blood and his blood had to not have an argument; the heart had to be transported; I had to get it."
There were, in short, an amazing number of variables (变量) that led to Young
being here today.
"I just feel enormous gratitude," he says of his donor (捐献者)."He gave me a heart so I'm still alive-"I'm sure I'm going to think about this person for the rest of my life."
【小题1】The poetry collection Fall Higher _______.

A.was published in February
B.refers darkness as its main theme
C.is Young's latest collection of poetry
D.was written after Young's heart transplant
【小题2】We can learn from the text that Young _______.
A.was born with heart disease
B.received a heart transplant in February
C.married a female poet after he wrote "Late Valentine"
D.wrote a poem for his wife in his collection
【小题3】What does the writer try to say in Paragraph 3?
A.The writer expected some bright future, but he was disappointed.
B.The writer had less enthusiasm than before, but he still kept on writing.
C.The writer devoted more time to poems, so he grasped a good chance.
D.The writer wrote poems with less enthusiasm, so he quitted for a while.
【小题4】Which of the following statements is TRUE?
A."How Grasp Green" is the first poem in Fall Higher.
B.Young began all his poems with his illness.
C.Young's father died when Young was 49 years old.
D.Young's health situation is mentioned in his poetry.
【小题5】What is the text mainly about?
A.Dean Young and his latest collection.
B.Dean Young and his heart problems.
C.The meaning of Fall Higher.
D.An analysis of Dean Young's poems.

On September 22, 1986, Jay Brunkella, a police-officer in the Rogers Park district in Chicago, was shot during a drug arrest and died. Shortly afterwards, fellow officer Ken Knapcik, a 20-year veteran (老警官) of the force, returned home after work to find a note from his 15-year-old daughter on the dining table.
Dad---This poem came directly from my heart. I love you so much! It scares and amazes me that you go out every day and risk everything to provide us with all that we have. I wrote this to express how much I love you and how much lost I’d be without you-Laura. P.S.: Hey, let’s be careful out there.
Titled “The Ultimate Cop”, Laura’s poem was dedicated “To all the cops in the world who have daughters who love them with all their hearts. And especially to my dad.” It was about a police-officer’s daughter who sees on the night time news that her father has been shot. Part of poem: “Daddy, my Daddy, can you hear me cry? Oh, God, I need my Daddy, please don’t let him die.”
Ken Knapcik stood alone as he read the poem. “It took me several minutes,” he said. “I’d get through part of it and have to stop before I could go on. I was weeping. She had never told me she was scared.” He took the poem to work the next day and showed it to his fellow officers. “I’ve never seen so many grown men cry. Some couldn’t finish it.”
Knapcik keeps Laura’s poem in the pocket of his police jacket. He takes it with him every time he leaves the house for a new shift. “I don’t want to be out there without it.” he said, “I’ll probably carry it with me forever.”
【小题1】Laura wrote the poem ______.

A.in memory of her father who was shot in the drug arrest
B.to show her great sorrow in losing her father
C.to show her respect to all the cops who lost their lives
D.to tell Officer Ken Knapcik how much she loved him
【小题2】All the officers cried because ______.
A.Jay Brunkella was shot and died
B.they were greatly touched by the poem
C.the poem was so sad that they couldn’t hold back their tears
D.they thought of their dangerous life
【小题3】Knapcik keeps Laura’s poem in his pocket ______.
A.to treasure her daughter’s love and to value his own life
B.to keep it from missing
C.because he can’t go out without it
D.to mourn over the death of officer Jay Brunkella
【小题4】Which of the following is the best title for the passage?
A.Poem for a copB.An officer’s death
C.Daughter’s loveD.Love my job, love my daughter


Ⅲ. 阅读(共两节,满分40分)
第一节:阅读理解(共15题;每小题2分,满分30分)
Anyone who is addicted to reading bus tickets or cereal packets will understand the appeal of poems on the underground. Some years ago, a few acquaintances who lived and worked in London , who used the Tube and loved poetry, decided that it would be pleasant to read a few lines by their favorite poets as they traveled around by Tube, instead of just glancing upwards at the tiresome advertisements. The underground had a surplus (剩余的)of advertising space on the trains. They suggested filling the blank space on the trains, for the entertainment of the traveling public.
The poems took on a new life when they were removed from books and placed alongside the adverts. Commuters enjoyed the idea of reading Keats’“Much have I traveled in the realms of gold” on a crowded Central Line train, or trying to learn by heart a sonnet between Hammersmith and Piccadilly. The choice of poems wasn’t arbitrary (随机的)but specially chosen. It catered for all tastes including living and dead poems from the homeland and from all over the English-speaking world, and especially poems which have association with London.
The success of the poems on the underground enterprises confirmed that Britain was a nation of poetry lovers. Hundreds of people corresponded with London Underground suggesting poems, or just to say thank you. In January 1989, on the third anniversary after the first poems on the Underground, London Underground promised to donate all the spaces free, to increase the number available (at least one poem in each train carriage), and to pay for the production costs as well. They also updated the poems every few months. Posters of the poems decorated the British Council libraries throughout the world, but the best way to view the poems is to see them by yourselves, on whichever train you choose, in every zone of the network—for the price of an underground ticket.
41.Which of the following is the best title for the passage?
A. Shelly and Keat’s Poems  
B. The Poems on the Underground
C. Travelling on the Tube in London   
D. The Poems about London
42.The poems were _________.
A. removed from books and placed in empty advertising spaces
B. taken from throughout the English-speaking world and chosen to please everyone
C. including poems about London by Shelly, Burns, Keats and by the commuters themselves
D. meant to be read aloud and learnt by heart
43. Which is the closest in meaning to “association”?
A.Connection.   B.Difference.   C.Similarity.  D.Comparison.
44. The best place to see the poem is ________.
A. in any train on the network                          
B. in libraries around the world
C. in trains on the Central Line and between Hammersmith and Piccadilly
D. in some carriage anywhere on the network
45. Which of the following statements is true according to the passage above?
A. People who like reading bus tickets advocate poems on the underground .
B. Spaces which were used for advertisements are now completely occupied by poems on the tube.
C. You can appreciate the poems you like at the cost of only a tube ticket in London.
D. The success of the poems on the underground indicates people’s love for the tube of London.

Not all bodies of water are so evidently alive as the Atlantic Ocean, an S-shaped body of water covering 33 million square miles. The Atlantic has, in a sense, replaced the Mediterranean as the inland sea of Western civilization. Unlike real inland seas, which seem strangely still, the Atlantic is rich in oceanic liveliness. It is perhaps not surprising that its vitality has been much written about by ancient poets.

“Storm at Sea”, a short poem written around 700, is generally regarded as one of mankind’s earliest artistic representations of the Atlantic.

When the wind is from the west

All the waves that cannot rest

To the east must thunder on

Where the bright tree of the sun

Is rooted in the ocean’s breast.

As the poem suggests, the Atlantic is never dead and dull. It is an ocean that moves, impressively and endlessly. It makes all kinds of noise—it is forever thundering, boiling, crashing, and whistling.

It is easy to imagine the Atlantic trying to draw breath—perhaps not so noticeably out in mid-ocean, but where it meets land, its waters bathing up and down a sandy beach. It mimics(模仿) nearly perfectly the steady breathing of a living creature. It is filled with symbiotic existences, too: unimaginable quantities of creatures, little and large alike, mix within its depths in a kind of oceanic harmony, giving to the waters a feeling of heartbeat, a kind of sub-ocean vitality. And it has a psychology. It has personalities: sometimes peaceful and pleasant, on rare occasions rough and wild; always it is strong and striking.

1.Unlike real inland seas, the Atlantic Ocean is______.

A.always energetic

B.lacking in liveliness

C.shaped like a square

D.favored by ancient poets

2.What is the purpose of using the poem “Storm at Sea” in the passage?

A.To describe the movement of the waves.

B.To show the strength of the storm.

C.To represent the power of the ocean.

D.To prove the vastness of the sea.

3.What does the underlined word “symbiotic” mean?

A.Living together.

B.Growing fast.

C.Moving harmoniously.

D.Breathing peacefully.

4.In the last paragraph, the Atlantic is compared to______.

A.a beautiful and poetic place

B.a flesh and blood person

C.a wonderful world

D.a lovely animal

 

On September 22, 1986, Jay Brunkella, a police-officer in the Rogers Park district in Chicago, was shot during a drug arrest and died. Shortly afterwards, fellow officer Ken Knapcik, a 20-year veteran (老警官) of the force, returned home after work to find a note from his 15-year-old daughter on the dining table.

Dad---This poem came directly from my heart. I love you so much! It scares and amazes me that you go out every day and risk everything to provide us with all that we have. I wrote this to express how much I love you and how much lost I’d be without you-Laura. P.S.: Hey, let’s be careful out there.

Titled “The Ultimate Cop”, Laura’s poem was dedicated “To all the cops in the world who have daughters who love them with all their hearts. And especially to my dad.” It was about a police-officer’s daughter who sees on the night time news that her father has been shot. Part of poem: “Daddy, my Daddy, can you hear me cry? Oh, God, I need my Daddy, please don’t let him die.”

Ken Knapcik stood alone as he read the poem. “It took me several minutes,” he said. “I’d get through part of it and have to stop before I could go on. I was weeping. She had never told me she was scared.” He took the poem to work the next day and showed it to his fellow officers. “I’ve never seen so many grown men cry. Some couldn’t finish it.”

Knapcik keeps Laura’s poem in the pocket of his police jacket. He takes it with him every time he leaves the house for a new shift. “I don’t want to be out there without it.” he said, “I’ll probably carry it with me forever.”

1.Laura wrote the poem ______.

A.in memory of her father who was shot in the drug arrest

B.to show her great sorrow in losing her father

C.to show her respect to all the cops who lost their lives

D.to tell Officer Ken Knapcik how much she loved him

2.All the officers cried because ______.

A.Jay Brunkella was shot and died

B.they were greatly touched by the poem

C.the poem was so sad that they couldn’t hold back their tears

D.they thought of their dangerous life

3.Knapcik keeps Laura’s poem in his pocket ______.

A.to treasure her daughter’s love and to value his own life

B.to keep it from missing

C.because he can’t go out without it

D.to mourn over the death of officer Jay Brunkella

4.Which of the following is the best title for the passage?

A.Poem for a cop                         B.An officer’s death

C.Daughter’s love                       D.Love my job, love my daughter

 

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