PBS高端访谈:缅怀诗人唐纳德·霍尔

JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally tonight, Jeffrey Brown remembers renowned¹ writer Donald Hall, widely considered one of the greatest poets of his generation.

JEFFREY BROWN: In 1975, Donald Hall came to live on the small Wilmot, New Hampshire, farm he'd visited as a boy, when his grandparents lived here. He told me of it when I visited in 2006.

DONALD HALL, Poet: I'm incredibly lucky. I fell in love with this place when I was 8 or 10, and loved the people in it, and loved the culture around it, loved the hills and valleys, loved the old houses, like this one, white with green shutters². And when I came back, I decided³ I had been writing about New Hampshire from a distance so much. Now that I was back in New Hampshire, I wouldn't write about it anymore. Quite the reverse. I went through everything. I wrote about all the old farm animals. I wrote about the hills. Everything about it stimulated⁴ me, and I had perhaps the most prolific⁵ year of my life when I first came back.

JEFFREY BROWN: There's a poem called Mount Kearsarge.

DONALD HALL: Mount Kearsarge. Great blue mountain, ghosts. I look at you from the porch of the farmhouse⁶ where I watched you all summer as a boy. Steep sides, narrow flat patch on top. You are clear to me, like the memory of one day.

JEFFREY BROWN: Two of his best-known books, Without and The Painted Bed, are about his most painful subject, the death of his wife, poet Jane Kenyon, who died here of leukemia at age 47. Was that hard to do, or was that helpful?

DONALD HALL: It was helpful in the extreme. I took to writing her letters after her death. And writing her letters after her death gave me the only sort of happiness of the day. I felt in communication with her somehow, not supernaturally, but poetically⁷. And every important thing in my life had found itself into poems. But when she was sick, dying of leukemia, what else could I write about?

JEFFREY BROWN: Hall was a prolific writer. In addition to poetry, there were memoirs⁸, essays, children's books, even two books about his beloved baseball. He served as U.S. poet laureate in 2006. Among many other honors, he received a National Medal of Arts from President Obama. And, always, he was a writer of and advocate for poetry.

DONALD HALL: Poetry offers works of art that are beautiful, like paintings, but there are also works of art that embody⁹ emotion and that are kind of school for feeling. They teach how to feel, and they do this by the means of their beauty of language.

JEFFREY BROWN: Donald Hall died of cancer at Eagle Pond Farm in New Hampshire on Saturday. He was 89.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, online, you can read a poem by the late author. That's on our Web site, PBS.orgNewsHour.

Elisabeth Marlin: Thank you very much for having me.

朱迪·伍德拉夫：今晚，杰弗里·布朗怀念著名作家唐纳德·霍尔，人们广泛认为唐纳德·霍尔是他这一代最伟大的诗人之一。

杰弗里·布朗：1975年，唐纳德·霍尔来到新罕布什尔州小威尔莫特定居，这里有一座农场，孩提时代的他曾来过这里，当时他的祖父母曾在此居住。2006年，我去看望他时，他将此事告诉我。

唐纳德·霍尔，诗人：我极其幸运。我8岁或10岁的时候就爱上了这个地方，喜欢那里的人，喜欢周围的文化，喜欢这里的山丘和峡谷，喜欢那些古老的房子，就像这间带着绿色百叶窗的白色小屋。当我回来的时候，我想，一直以来，写关于新罕布什尔州的文章，都是身隔千里。于是我决定，既然我回到了新罕布什尔州，我就不再描绘它了。恰恰相反。我经历了一切。我写了老农场里所有的动物。我写了山。这里的一切激发了我的创作灵感，我第一次回来的时候，也许是我一生中作品最多产的一年。

杰弗里·布朗：有一首诗叫《基尔萨吉峰》。

唐纳德·霍尔：《基尔萨吉峰》。伟大的蓝山，幽灵。小时候整个夏天，我都在看你，从农舍的门廊里看你。陡峭的边，顶部窄平的补丁。你的轮廓如此清晰，仿佛就在昨日。

杰弗里·布朗：他最著名的两本书，《空无》和《红绘》，谈论了他最痛苦的话题，他的妻子，诗人简·肯庸，47岁时死于白血病。这样做很艰难，还是会有帮助？

唐纳德·霍尔：这极其有帮助。她去世后，我开始写信给她。而她去世后我写的信为我带来了一天中唯一的幸福时刻。我觉得和她交流，不是超自然的，而是诗意的。我生命中每一件重要的事情都已融入诗歌。但是当她生病，死于白血病，我还能写些什么呢？

杰弗里·布朗：霍尔是一位多产的作家。除了诗歌，还有回忆录、散文、儿童读物，甚至还有两本关于他心爱棒球的书。2006年，他被评为“美国桂冠诗人”。他一生所获荣誉众多，其中，奥巴马总统为他颁发了美国国家荣誉艺术奖章。而且，他一直是诗人和诗歌倡导者。

唐纳德·霍尔：诗歌是美丽的艺术品，就像绘画，但艺术作品也体现情感，有些校园情怀。他们通过语言的美感来教会人如何感受。

杰弗里·布朗：唐纳德·霍尔因癌症于周六在新罕布什尔州鹰潭农场（Eagle Pond Farm）去世，享年89岁。

朱迪·伍德拉夫：您可以在我们的网站PBS.orgNewsHour上读一读这位已故作家的诗作。

1 renowned   

adj.著名的，有名望的，声誉鹊起的

参考例句：

• He is one of the world's renowned writers.他是世界上知名的作家之一。
• She is renowned for her advocacy of human rights.她以提倡人权而闻名。

2 shutters   

百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门

参考例句：

• The shop-front is fitted with rolling shutters. 那商店的店门装有卷门。
• The shutters thumped the wall in the wind. 在风中百叶窗砰砰地碰在墙上。

3 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

4 stimulated   

a.刺激的

参考例句：

• The exhibition has stimulated interest in her work. 展览增进了人们对她作品的兴趣。
• The award has stimulated her into working still harder. 奖金促使她更加努力地工作。

5 prolific   

adj.丰富的，大量的；多产的，富有创造力的

参考例句：

• She is a prolific writer of novels and short stories.她是一位多产的作家，写了很多小说和短篇故事。
• The last few pages of the document are prolific of mistakes.这个文件的最后几页错误很多。

6 farmhouse   

n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房）

参考例句：

• We fell for the farmhouse as soon as we saw it.我们对那所农舍一见倾心。
• We put up for the night at a farmhouse.我们在一间农舍投宿了一夜。

7 poetically   

adv.有诗意地，用韵文

参考例句：

• Life is poetically compared to the morning dew. 在诗歌中，人生被比喻为朝露。 来自辞典例句
• Poetically, Midsummer's Eve begins in flowers and ends in fire. 仲夏节是富有诗意的节日，它以鲜花领航，在篝火旁完美落幕。 来自互联网

8 memoirs   

n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数)

参考例句：

• Her memoirs were ghostwritten. 她的回忆录是由别人代写的。
• I watched a trailer for the screenplay of his memoirs. 我看过以他的回忆录改编成电影的预告片。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 embody   

vt.具体表达，使具体化；包含，收录

参考例句：

• The latest locomotives embody many new features. 这些最新的机车具有许多新的特色。
• Hemingway's characters plainly embody his own values and view of life.海明威笔下的角色明确反映出他自己的价值观与人生观。