VOA标准英语2011--Palestinian-American Poet Bridges 2 Cult

Palestinian-American Poet Bridges 2 Cultures

Naomi Shihab Nye is an award-winning Palestinian-American poet who has written or edited nearly 30 books and published five collections of poems for both adults and young people.
For Naomi Shihab Nye, poetry is at once deeply spiritual and fully¹ of this world. Today she wears a handmade bracelet² sent by an admirer. It's inscribed³ with a question from one of her poems: "What songs travel toward us, from far away, to deepen our days?" She describes how poetry is like a bracelet.
"I think poetry wants to wrap around us, and I think it does if we allow it to. There is a sense of being held by a poem when you read a poem you love. It's not as if you are just appreciating it intellectually. It is as if it has wrapped itself around your spirit or your heart or your memory and it belongs to you in a much more intimate way."
Nye was born in 1952 in Saint Louis, Missouri, after her father's Palestinian family lost its home as a result of the1948 war which led to the creation of Israel. She says a sense of exile and longing⁴ cast a shadow over her girlhood and accounts for her lifelong devotion to social justice.
She credits her father and her American mother with teaching her about poetry's power to comfort and awaken⁵. She recalls a poem by Rachel Field called "Some People," which had a profound impact upon her as a child.
Isn't it strange some people make
You feel so tired inside,
Your thoughts begin to shrivel up
Like leaves all brown and dried!
But when you're with some other ones,
It's stranger still to find
Your thoughts as thick as fireflies
All shiny in your mind!
"For a seven year-old, that made sense already because I knew here were dull people and there were glittering voices and people you wanted to be around because of the way they spoke⁶ and what they talked about," she says. "And I remember thinking ‘I may need that poem in the future. I better memorize it.'"?
Nye began writing her own poetry at the age of six. She says a turning point came when, at age 14, she first met her grandmother, a wise and feisty Palestinian matriarch who lived to be 106. Nye reads a verse from "The Words Under the Words" from "19 Varieties of Gazelle," her collection of poems about the Middle East.
My grandmother's hands recognize grapes
the damp shine of a goat's new skin.
When I was sick they followed me
I woke from the long fever to find them
covering my head like cool prayers...
Readers of Nye's work have noted⁷ a similarity between prayer and poetry. "There is a sense that by putting words together something might be listening, some larger spirit, force or essence. The silence might be listening and it's always been enough to know that silence is on the other side of all this chatter⁸."
Nye's persona contains apparent contradictions. For example, she is gregarious⁹ and curious about others, but also introspective and craves¹⁰ the solace¹¹ of solitude¹². She offers advice to those of like mind in her poem "The Art of Disappearing."?
If they say We should get together say why?
It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery¹³ bell at twilight¹⁴. Tell them
you have a new project.
It will never be finished.
When someone
recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly¹⁵ and become a cabbage.
Nye says she would never want to be rude.
"And by the way, that poem has made some people mad. However, it has also made some young readers like of the middle school age really talk to me about time. ‘Well how do you see time at your age?' ‘What do you mean at the end of that poem ‘know you could tumble at any second?' And I think ever since I was a very little child, I realized that our lives, no matter how long we live, would be very brief in the full scheme of time."
Nye always finds time to speak out publicly against oppression and violence, whether it's the war in Iraq, the plight¹⁶ of the dispossessed, the Palestinian exile, or the terrorist bombings of September 11, 2001. In this verse from her poem "Blood," she writes about her reaction to that day.?
I call my father, we talk around the news.
It is too much for him,
neither of his two languages can reach it.
I drive into the country to find sheep, cows,
to plead with the air.
Who calls anyone civilized¹⁷?
Where can the crying heart graze?
What does a true Arab do now?
In Nye's view, peace within and peace in the world form a continuum, and feelings that at first appear unrelated are connected. We hear this in an excerpt¹⁸ from her famous poem, "Kindness."?
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as
the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

1 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。

2 bracelet   

n.手镯，臂镯

参考例句：

• The jeweler charges lots of money to set diamonds in a bracelet.珠宝匠要很多钱才肯把钻石镶在手镯上。
• She left her gold bracelet as a pledge.她留下她的金手镯作抵押品。

3 inscribed   

v.写，刻( inscribe的过去式和过去分词 )；内接

参考例句：

• His name was inscribed on the trophy. 他的名字刻在奖杯上。
• The names of the dead were inscribed on the wall. 死者的名字被刻在墙上。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 longing   

n.（for）渴望

参考例句：

• Hearing the tune again sent waves of longing through her.再次听到那首曲子使她胸中充满了渴望。
• His heart burned with longing for revenge.他心中燃烧着急欲复仇的怒火。

5 awaken   

vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起

参考例句：

• Old people awaken early in the morning.老年人早晨醒得早。
• Please awaken me at six.请于六点叫醒我。

6 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

7 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

8 chatter   

vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战

参考例句：

• Her continuous chatter vexes me.她的喋喋不休使我烦透了。
• I've had enough of their continual chatter.我已厌烦了他们喋喋不休的闲谈。

9 gregarious   

adj.群居的，喜好群居的

参考例句：

• These animals are highly gregarious.这些动物非常喜欢群居。
• They are gregarious birds and feed in flocks.它们是群居鸟类，会集群觅食。

10 craves   

渴望，热望( crave的第三人称单数 )； 恳求，请求

参考例句：

• The tree craves calm but the wind will not drop. 树欲静而风不止。
• Victory would give him a passport to the riches he craves. 胜利将使他有机会获得自己梦寐以求的财富。

11 solace   

n.安慰；v.使快乐；vt.安慰(物)，缓和

参考例句：

• They sought solace in religion from the harshness of their everyday lives.他们日常生活很艰难，就在宗教中寻求安慰。
• His acting career took a nosedive and he turned to drink for solace.演艺事业突然一落千丈，他便借酒浇愁。

12 solitude   

n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方

参考例句：

• People need a chance to reflect on spiritual matters in solitude. 人们需要独处的机会来反思精神上的事情。
• They searched for a place where they could live in solitude. 他们寻找一个可以过隐居生活的地方。

13 monastery   

n.修道院，僧院，寺院

参考例句：

• They found an icon in the monastery.他们在修道院中发现了一个圣像。
• She was appointed the superior of the monastery two years ago.两年前她被任命为这个修道院的院长。

14 twilight   

n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期

参考例句：

• Twilight merged into darkness.夕阳的光辉融于黑暗中。
• Twilight was sweet with the smell of lilac and freshly turned earth.薄暮充满紫丁香和新翻耕的泥土的香味。

15 briefly   

adv.简单地，简短地

参考例句：

• I want to touch briefly on another aspect of the problem.我想简单地谈一下这个问题的另一方面。
• He was kidnapped and briefly detained by a terrorist group.他被一个恐怖组织绑架并短暂拘禁。

16 plight   

n.困境，境况，誓约，艰难；vt.宣誓，保证，约定

参考例句：

• The leader was much concerned over the plight of the refugees.那位领袖对难民的困境很担忧。
• She was in a most helpless plight.她真不知如何是好。

17 civilized   

a.有教养的，文雅的

参考例句：

• Racism is abhorrent to a civilized society. 文明社会憎恶种族主义。
• rising crime in our so-called civilized societies 在我们所谓文明社会中日益增多的犯罪行为

18 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？