题目内容
It was all my ______ that my son had made such a silly but serious _______.
A. fault; error B. mistake; fault C. shortcoming; mistake D. fault; mistake
D
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 |
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 |
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. |
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. |
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. |
She was dancing. My lame grandmother was dancing. I stood in the living room doorway, looking at her beautiful movements, absolutely shocked. She was the pet of the dancing world. And then she’d had her accident and it was all over. I had read that in an old newspaper article.
‘‘So… Your leg? I mean, how did your leg heal (恢复健全)?”
“To tell you the truth — my legs have been well all my life,” she sighed.
“But I don’t understand!” I said, “Your dancing career (事业)… You pretended all these years?”
‘‘Very much so, and for a very good reason.”
She thought for a while and then continued. “We were talking about engagement (订婚) when your grandfather had to go to war. I was so afraid of losing him that the only way I could stay normal was to dance. I put all my energy and time into practicing and I became very good. Critics praised me, the public loved me, but all I could feel was the ache in my heart, not knowing whether the love of my life would ever return. Then one day a letter came. There were only three sentences: ‘I have lost my leg. I am no longer a whole man and now give you back your freedom. It is best you forget about me.’’’
“I made my decision there and then. I traveled away from the city. When I returned I had bought myself a stick. I told everyone I had been in a car crash and that my leg would never completely heal again. My dancing days were over. No one doubted the story — I had learned to limp (一瘸一拐地走) convincingly before I returned home. And I made sure the first person to hear of my accident was a reporter I knew well. Then I traveled to the hospital. They had pushed your grandfather outside in his wheelchair. I took a deep breath, leaned on my stick and limped to him.”
“I showed him newspaper articles of my accident. ‘There is a whole life waiting for us out there! But I am not going to carry you. You are going to walk yourself.’”
“I limped a few steps toward him and showed him what I’d taken out of my pocket. ‘Now show me you are still a man.’ I said. He bent to take his stick from the ground and struggled out of that wheelchair. He managed it on his own and walked to me and never sat in a wheelchair again in his life.”
“What did you show him?” I had to know. Grandma looked at me and smiled. “Two engagement rings, of course. I had bought them the day after he left for the war and I was not going to waste them on any other man.”
1.What does the underlined word “it” in the first paragraph refer to?
A.Her accident. |
B.Her pet. |
C.Her leg. |
D.Her dancing career. |
2.Which is the correct order of the following events according to the passage?
a. Grandfather lost his leg in the war.
b. Grandmother bought two engagement rings.
c. Grandfather was inspired to stand up on his own.
d. Grandmother pretended she was lame.
e. Grandmother became an excellent dancer.
f. Grandfather had to go to war.
A.e-f-b-a-d-c |
B.f-e-a-c-b-d |
C.f-b-e-a-d-c |
D.e-b-f-a-c-d |
3.Which of the following words can best describe grandmother?
A.Thoughtful and determined. |
B.Unselfish but stubborn. |
C.Courageous but unreliable. |
D.Sensitive and dishonest. |
4.What’s the main idea of the passage?
A.The love of a disabled couple. |
B.The grandmother’s unconditional love. |
C.The meaning of an engagement. |
D.The grandfather’s brave story. |
A lawyer and a young lady were sitting next to each other on a long flight. The lawyer asked if she would like to play a fun game. The lady just wanted to take a nap, so she politely refused.
The lawyer explained that the game was actually very easy. He explained “I ask you a question, and if you don’t know the answer, you pay me, and vice versa(反之亦然).” Again, the lady politely refused and tried to get some sleep.
The lawyer added eagerly, “Okay, if you don’t know the answer, you pay me $5, and if I don’t know the answer, I will pay you $50!” Considering that there would be no end to this suffering unless she played, the lady agreed.
The lawyer asked the first question, “What is the distance from the earth to the moon?” The young lady didn't say a word, pulled out five dollars from her purse and handed it to the lawyer.
Now, it was the lady’s turn. She asked the lawyer, “What goes up a hill with three legs, and comes down with four?” The lawyer was greatly puzzled. He took out his computer and searched all of his references. He searched the Net and sent e-mails to all of his friends, but it was all to no avail. After over an hour, he woke up the lady and handed her $50. The lady politely took the money and turned away to get back to sleep.
The lawyer, very puzzled now, woke the lady up again and asked, “Well, what on earth is the answer?” Without a word, the lady reached into her purse, handed the lawyer another $5 and went back to sleep.
1.The lawyer tried to persuade the lady to play the game because he .
A.knew he could win |
B.wanted to have fun with the lady |
C.wanted to lose money to her |
D.liked to chat with young ladies |
2.Which of the following best describes the meaning of the underlined words?
A.No messages arrived |
B.No one could help him |
C.The Net failed to work |
D.Nobody answered his e-mails |
3.We may infer from the story that .
A.the lawyer and the lady used to be lovers. |
B.there was no answer to the lady’s question. |
C.the lady didn't like playing games with strangers. |
D.the lawyer was too stupid to answer the question. |
4.The author’s purpose for writing the story is to .
A.tell us how clever the lady is |
B.describe the rules of playing games |
C.show that it is interesting to play games |
D.make fun of the lawyer |