2017英语专八阅读100篇高级篇附答案解析（83）

2016-12-23 15:13:29来源：网络

2017英语专八阅读100篇高级篇附答案解析（83）

　　Just asNorman Mailer, John Updike and Philip Roth were at various times regarded asthe greatest American novelist since the second world war, John Ashbery andRobert Lowell vied for the title of greatest American poet. Yet the two mencould not be more different. Lowell was a public figure who engaged withpolitics-in 1967 he marched shoulder-to-shoulder with Mailer in protest againstthe Vietnam war, as described in Mailer’s novel The Armies of theNight . Lowell took on substantial themes and envisioned himself as atragic, heroic figure, fighting against his own demons. Mr Ashbery’s verse, by contrast, is morebeguilingly casual. In his hands, the making of a poem can feel like thetumbling of dice on a table top. Visible on the page is a delicately playfulstrewing of words, looking to engage with each other in a shyly puzzledfashion. And there is an element of Dada-like play in his unpredictability ofaddress with its perpetual shifting of tones.

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

　　Lowell wrotein strict formal measures; some of his last books consisted of entire sequencesof sonnets. Mr Ashbery can also be partial to particular forms of verse, thoughthese tend to be of a fairly eccentric kind-the cento , for example, and thepantoum . Often he writes in a free-flowing, conversational manner thatdepends for its success upon the fact that the ending of lines is untrammelledby any concern about whether or not they scan. Within many of his poems, thereoften 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 tosingle them out in order to send up the very idea of the simile in poetry, asin Violets blossomed loudly/ like a swear word in an empty tank .

　　Life, forLowell, was a serious matter, just as he was a serious man. Mr Ashbery’s approach, as evinced by hispoetry, is more that of a gentle shrug of amused bewilderment. Unlike Lowell’s, his poems are neitherautobiographical nor confessional. He doesn’t take himself that seriously. Is all of life a tepid housewarming? For a poet this is a tougherquestion to answer than you might think.

　　1.The word substantial most probably means_____.

　　[A] serious

　　[B] big

　　[C] important

　　[D] real

　　2. The lastwords of Lowell mean that_____.

　　[A] the worldshould go forward without stopping.

　　[B] the worldshould not mourn for him.

　　[C] the worldshould forget him totally.

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

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

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