L****o
发帖数: 1642 | 1 每年四月是National Poetry Month， 是由The Academy of American Poets于1996年
发起的。在这个月，全国各地会有很多图书馆、学校及其他机构举办诗歌讲座、朗诵等
活动，比如我见过我们这儿当地公共图书馆就有诗人开过介绍聂鲁达和其他诗人作品的
讲座。poets.org上有更多信息。
我们这儿的当地报纸上也有一些关于诗的文章。下面这篇是个诗人和文学教授写的教普
通读者如何阅读理解诗歌的文章，在昨天的报纸上，挺有意思的。
摘要一下：没有必要对诗有一种本能的排斥，不要预先假定自己读不懂诗。诗人可能会
用一些看似荒唐无理的语言，来促使读者用不同的眼光看世界。如果一首诗一读就全懂
，没有任何神秘性，不能促人思考，也不一定就好。诗要慢慢读，多读几遍，即使第一
遍没读懂，并不意味着这是首烂诗，真正好的诗，每读一遍，就会给人更多理解，更多
发现，意味无穷。
Understanding Poetry
By Joseph Campana
Houston Chronicle, April 25, 2012
I'm not sure I understand the primal fear poetry inspires in so many. My
conversations with people of all ages and walks of life suggest that most
assume it to be an art utterly out of reach.
Take my mother.
"But I don't understand poetry!" she exclaimed years ago, when I told her I
had started to publish poems. There was something touching in my mother's
sudden terror that she would not be able to understand her own child.
Soon after this conversation, my first book of poems, "The Book of Faces,"
was accepted for publication. I can only imagine the anxieties this provoked
, but at that point I was finishing a Ph.D. in Renaissance literature. Did
the ghost of Shakespeare really bother my mother less than the idea of
poetry? Apparently so.
And it isn't just my mother. One of my very fine, prize-winning
undergraduates at Rice University said to me just the other day, "Poetry is
a beast I don't understand."
I've been thinking a lot lately about the way people assume poetry to be a
foreign language as I launch a series of readings from my newest book of
poems, "Natural Selections." There's nothing like the look of recognition
you see in the faces of a crowd when people suddenly forget they can't
understand poetry when they hear it live.
As April is National Poetry Month, I want to offer a few words of advice and
encouragement for anyone who, like Mother, thinks poetry isn't for her.
Poetry, after all, is for everyone.
1. Relax. Most people decide in advance that they can't understand poetry,
and it quickly becomes a self-fulfilled prophecy. The anxiety behind this
feeling is that the world won't make sense and that when we don't understand
something we look stupid.
One of the great pleasures of poetry can be the way it asks us to see the
world differently. Often, it uses nonsense or what I think of as half-sense
to offer new perspectives. There are worse things by far than not
understanding something. If we understood everything immediately, there
would be no mystery in the world and no reason to think about anything.
2. Enjoy. Poetry taps into the fundamental vitality and rhythms of mind and
body. Sometimes we know this as pure pleasure. When a poem is sad or
haunting or complex, we may not feel pleasure, but we do feel a little more
alive for having experienced the poem.
Matthew Vale, one of my students and a very talented writer, put it well
when I asked him what advice he would give readers new to poetry: "It doesn'
t matter that you understand it immediately. Sometimes what's important is
that it sounds nice."
Often people assume we either comprehend or we enjoy. On the contrary,
literary pleasure makes possible a form of background thinking. You may not
notice it happening, but enjoyment makes you understand the world more
deeply.
3. Listen. I recently read from "Natural Selections" at the Museum of Fine
Arts, Houston, which licensed the book's beautiful cover based on a
lithograph by Grant Wood called "March." In the question and answer period,
many people complimented me by saying, "Poetry is meant to be heard."
Poetry is meant to be encountered however we find it, on the page or in
person. But readings are special. Houston is a rich literary town, and you
can enjoy anything from the high-end evening readings downtown sponsored by
Inprint to a Saturday afternoon reading at a branch of the Houston Public
Library through its Public Poetry program.
Up close and personal is how I like a poetry reading, but the digital
resources for poetry readings grow exponentially. You can also find
wonderful materials at the Poetry Archive (poetryarchive.org), the Academy
of American Poets (poets.org), or, if local is your flavor, Houston's Taping
for the Blind (tapingfortheblind.org), which archives readings by many
Houston poets including yours truly.
When you listen, ask yourself how the poem is asking you to listen. The way
you do when someone's talking directly to you? The way you do when you
overhear a conversation? Is the poem shouting at you? Asking you to laugh
with it? Poems can be charming or wicked and they work best we when allow
them to invite us into the conversations they create.
4. Slow down. Online poetry resources get better every day, but don't let
the allure of digital rapidity whisk you away before you can really
experience poetry. Even when a poem is brief and can be read quickly, poetry
is the original slow art. When we think about how we entertain ourselves,
we could learn a lot from the slow-food movement. Poems feed the part of the
mind that meditates slowly, and they teach us that most things aren't so
hard to think about if you give them enough time.
5. Read and reread. Often we think that a poem that isn't perfectly clear
the first time we read it must be badly written or just not our cup of tea.
What's the rush? Good poems are better every time we read them and richly
repay frequent visits.
6. Make poetry a daily habit. Who says only April is for poetry? Try, for a
month, reading a poem every day. There are many ways of getting a daily dose
. Websites such as Poetry Daily and Verse Daily are in that very business.
And the Academy of American Poets will sign you up for a daily poem. What
could be better than samples of scintillating language in your inbox each
morning? It beats spam, and it'll make you a keener reader.
After all, practice makes perfect.
Joseph Campana teaches Renaissance literature and creative writing at Rice
University. | L*****s
发帖数: 24744 | | s**********8
发帖数: 25265 | 3 啊?
【在 L*****s 的大作中提到】
: O Captain! My Captain!
| wh
发帖数: 141625 | 4 哈哈，你也喜欢dead poets society这个电影？
【在 L*****s 的大作中提到】
: O Captain! My Captain!
| wh
发帖数: 141625 | 5 我们图书馆也请了好几个诗人来朗诵自己的诗。哎你们也可以朗诵录音贴上来呀，哈哈。
【在 L****o 的大作中提到】
: 每年四月是National Poetry Month， 是由The Academy of American Poets于1996年
: 发起的。在这个月，全国各地会有很多图书馆、学校及其他机构举办诗歌讲座、朗诵等
: 活动，比如我见过我们这儿当地公共图书馆就有诗人开过介绍聂鲁达和其他诗人作品的
: 讲座。poets.org上有更多信息。
: 我们这儿的当地报纸上也有一些关于诗的文章。下面这篇是个诗人和文学教授写的教普
: 通读者如何阅读理解诗歌的文章，在昨天的报纸上，挺有意思的。
: 摘要一下：没有必要对诗有一种本能的排斥，不要预先假定自己读不懂诗。诗人可能会
: 用一些看似荒唐无理的语言，来促使读者用不同的眼光看世界。如果一首诗一读就全懂
: ，没有任何神秘性，不能促人思考，也不一定就好。诗要慢慢读，多读几遍，即使第一
: 遍没读懂，并不意味着这是首烂诗，真正好的诗，每读一遍，就会给人更多理解，更多
| S*********e
发帖数: 3006 | 6 美国这点确实不错，诗歌的国度。
刚来美国的时候曾经附庸风雅参加过当地书店的诗歌活动。教授、管子工、哲学“家”、书店经理、诗人杂坐在一起，感觉很特别。当然，现在看来，这才是人类现代社会的常态。 | L****o
发帖数: 1642 | 7 其实诗歌在美国也越来越被边缘化，严肃文学也是，去年诺奖宣布后，美国新闻里有抱
怨说特兰斯特罗默都能获奖，而美国自从93年Toni Morison获奖后，就再也没得过，当
然也有美国学者声称“we don't deserve it”，因为文学没落了。美国可能比中国要
好些。
”、书店经理、诗人杂坐在一起，感觉很特别。当然，现在看来，这才是人类现代社会
的常态。
【在 S*********e 的大作中提到】
: 美国这点确实不错，诗歌的国度。
: 刚来美国的时候曾经附庸风雅参加过当地书店的诗歌活动。教授、管子工、哲学“家”、书店经理、诗人杂坐在一起，感觉很特别。当然，现在看来，这才是人类现代社会的常态。
|
|
