VOA标准英语2011--Poet Embraces Late-in-Life Love, Tender Sorrows

Poet Embraces Late-in-Life Love, Tender Sorrows

 

Award-winning American poet Jane Hirshfield has just published a new collection of poems. "Come, Thief" features themes of love, compassion¹, contemplation and the poignancy² of a human life fully³ lived.

Hirshfield sits in an anteroom at Poets House in New York about an hour before she appears before a large crowd to read from her seventh collection of poem.

“The title is a signal of welcoming what is inevitable⁴ into our lives,” says Hirshfied, who adds that the “‘thief” could have many meanings. “But what it primarily means in this book is time; time which brings us everything that we will ever experience and takes from us from us everything that we will ever experience, and one of the main threads of this book is simply saying ‘yes’ to that process. Yes to whatever comes, the difficult, the ecstatic, and yes to whatever goes – everything we will ever love and finally ourselves.”

The line, “Come, thief, the path to the doorway⁵ agrees,” appears in the title poem. Hirshfield explains its meaning.

“All paths welcome whatever wants to walk on them. The person delivering the mail comes down the path, the thief comes down the path. Your beloved comes down the path. Your enemy comes down the path, and the path never chooses. The path says yes to it all.”

In "Come, Thief," Jane Hirshfield reflects on the landmarks6 of a life, including the fact that she found true love at age 49.

Hirshfield says that she would like heself to be such a path “that allows every human experience entrance and says ‘welcome.’”

Hirshfield is nearing 60 and this poetry collection is largely about the landmarks of a life, including the fact that she found true love at age 49.

In the poem, “Two Rains,” she contrasts the wild and chaotic⁷ rain in California, where she lives, with the dull, predictable kind alluded⁸ to in the line “Windless blunt and cold, that orderly rain, like a fate uninterrupted by late love."

She explains her meaning. "We human beings. We’re very strange creatures. We think we want order. We think we want safety. We think we want security. But we really want – or what I really want - is to be absolutely overwhelmed, disordered, thrown into chaos⁹ and disarray¹⁰ by something absolutely fantastic which is larger than I am. And almost nothing rivals love for that."

Even so, Hirshfield wants her poems to express all aspects of a life. "Because part of the work of poetry is to make you permeable to the experience not only inside your own skin but the experience all around you.”

Hirshfield says universal human truths always play themselves out in the context of unique human lives. We are all in this together, but our stories belong to each of us alone.

“Every perfume comes from individual flowers. It might be ten thousand roses in one little vial of oil of roses, but each one was individual, had its life, had its roots had its bee. And there is no escaping it. We don’t live in a general world. We live in particular one.”

This seems to be part of the message in this excerpt¹¹ from Hirshfield’s poem “French Horn.”

For a few days only,
the plum tree outside the window
shoulders perfection.
No matter the plums will be small,
eaten only by squirrels and jays.
I feast on one thing, they on another,
the shoaling bees on a third.
What in this unpleated world isn’t someone’s seduction?

For Hirshfield, life is not our ideas about life, or even our poems about it. Indeed, in her poem, “The Tongue Says Loneliness," she suggests life is not a gate, but rather a horse plunging¹² through it.

All this can be found in “Come, Thief,” her seventh collection of poems, published by Knopf.

1 compassion   

n.同情，怜悯

参考例句：

• He could not help having compassion for the poor creature.他情不自禁地怜悯起那个可怜的人来。
• Her heart was filled with compassion for the motherless children.她对于没有母亲的孩子们充满了怜悯心。

2 poignancy   

n.辛酸事，尖锐

参考例句：

• As she sat in church her face had a pathos and poignancy. 当她坐在教堂里时，脸上带着一种哀婉和辛辣的表情。
• The movie, "Trains, Planes, and Automobiles" treats this with hilarity and poignancy. 电影“火车，飞机和汽车”是以欢娱和热情庆祝这个节日。

3 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

4 inevitable   

adj.不可避免的，必然发生的

参考例句：

• Mary was wearing her inevitable large hat.玛丽戴着她总是戴的那顶大帽子。
• The defeat had inevitable consequences for British policy.战败对英国政策不可避免地产生了影响。

5 doorway   

n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径

参考例句：

• They huddled in the shop doorway to shelter from the rain.他们挤在商店门口躲雨。
• Mary suddenly appeared in the doorway.玛丽突然出现在门口。

6 landmarks   

n.陆标( landmark的名词复数 )；目标；（标志重要阶段的）里程碑 ~ (in sth)；有历史意义的建筑物（或遗址）

参考例句：

• The book stands out as one of the notable landmarks in the progress of modern science. 这部著作是现代科学发展史上著名的里程碑之一。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The baby was one of the big landmarks in our relationship. 孩子的出世是我们俩关系中的一个重要转折点。 来自辞典例句

7 chaotic   

adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的

参考例句：

• Things have been getting chaotic in the office recently.最近办公室的情况越来越乱了。
• The traffic in the city was chaotic.这城市的交通糟透了。

8 alluded   

提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• In your remarks you alluded to a certain sinister design. 在你的谈话中，你提到了某个阴谋。
• She also alluded to her rival's past marital troubles. 她还影射了对手过去的婚姻问题。

9 chaos   

n.混乱，无秩序

参考例句：

• After the failure of electricity supply the city was in chaos.停电后，城市一片混乱。
• The typhoon left chaos behind it.台风后一片混乱。

10 disarray   

n.混乱，紊乱，凌乱

参考例句：

• His personal life fell into disarray when his wife left him.妻子离去后，他的个人生活一片混乱。
• Our plans were thrown into disarray by the rail strike.铁路罢工打乱了我们的计划。

11 excerpt   

n.摘录，选录，节录

参考例句：

• This is an excerpt from a novel.这是一部小说的摘录。
• Can you excerpt something from the newspaper? 你能从报纸上选录些东西吗？

12 plunging   

adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降

参考例句：

• War broke out again, plunging the people into misery and suffering. 战祸复发，生灵涂炭。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• He is plunging into an abyss of despair. 他陷入了绝望的深渊。 来自《简明英汉词典》