不可不知的十大诗人

Ten Poets You Should Discover

不可不知的十大诗人

■易则 编注

Poetry is not simply something you learn at school and forget a few months later. It can be fun, evocative, and exciting to read. Besides, quoting a few lines from a poem at a party will make people think you're terribly sophisticated!

托·斯·爱略特

"The Waste Land," by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), is possibly one of the greatest poems ever written. It expresses a bleak vision of a sterile1 and corrupt modern world. This poem is one to read sitting in a dingy caf? on a dark and rainy night at 2 o'clock in the morning!

西尔维亚·普拉斯

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) is one of the most influential modern poets, yet her life was a short and unhappy one. She attempted suicide aged 21, and managed to kill herself ten years later by gassing.3 The death of her father when she was nine years old greatly influenced her life and poetry, as can be seen in poems like "Daddy,""Lady Lazarus," and "Ariel."

华莱士·史蒂文斯

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) lived a longer and less dramatic life: he was vice-president of a law firm for 21 years until his death in 1955, aged 75. He may have been a lawyer, but his poetry, which deals with the role of the creative imagination in the modern world, contains sensuous, elaborate imagery.4 "The Emperor of Ice Cream" is a good introduction to his work.

安德鲁·马维尔

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) was a Metaphysical poet5 who was also well known as a satirist and politician. "To his Coy Mistress" is a rather elaborate attempt by the speaker of the poem to persuade his "coy mistress" to sleep with him.

威·巴·叶芝

Nobel Laureate6 W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) was widely considered to be the finest poet of his time. He was greatly interested in Irish history and the supernatural, and these are recurrent themes in his poems. Most critics think that the quality of Yeats' poetry improved as he got older. Try reading "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (1893), and "Leda" and "Swan" (1928) to see if you agree.

谢默斯·希尼

Irish poet Seamus Heaney (1939- ) won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, and was awarded the 2000 Whitbread7 Book of the Year Award for his translation of the epic Anglo-Saxon poem"Beowulf." His poetry is highly articulate, and has its roots in the physical, rural context of his childhood.

艾米莉·迪金森

While Heaney has been recognized in his lifetime, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), one of America's greatest poets, had only seven of her poems published while she was alive. Once a high-spirited and active young woman, she withdrew from society at the age of 30 and remained a recluse8 for the rest of her life.

萨福

Although little is known about her life, it does seem that Sappho (650-590 BC) was well renowned in her day. Two centuries after her death, Plato referred to her as the tenth Muse.9 She taught her art to a group of young women, and her poems are marked by exquisite beauty of diction,10 perfect simplicity of form, and intensity of emotion.

狄伦·托马斯

Someone for whom the emotional effect of words' sounds is as important as their literal sense is Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914-1953).11 A poem like "The Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait" shows his concern with vivid, sensual language. He was very much a man of the senses.12

沃尔特·惠特曼

Walt Whitman's (1819-1892) poem "Song of Myself" also glorifies the body and senses. Whitman was forced to publish the collection that contained the poem at his own expense, but it has become one of the most important poems in American literature.

1. sterile: 缺乏生气的。
2. a dingy cafe 昏暗的咖啡馆。
3. kill oneself by gassing: 打开煤气（自杀）。
4. elaborate imagery: 精美的意象。
5. 玄学派诗人。玄学派诗歌为英国十七世纪的一个诗歌流派，这种诗歌的特点是运用conceit（奇思），引人深思，善用引申的暗喻来对比极其不同的事物。
6. 诺贝尔文学奖得主。Laureate：桂冠诗人。
7. whitbread:英国的一个颇有影响的文学奖。
8. recluse：隐遁者。
9. the tenth Muse:第十缪斯（希腊神话9女神以外的人们 臆想中能激发灵感的女神，尤指古希腊女诗人萨福[Sappho]）。
10. diction: 措辞，用语。
11. 对于威尔士诗人狄伦·托马斯来说，词的声音的情感效果和它们的字面意思同等重要。
12. 他是一个非常讲究感官效果的诗人。