阅读理解
Walt Whitman was born in 1819 in Long Island, New York. Whitman received most of his education outside of the
classroom. At the age of eleven, he worked in a law office as an office boy where he
became interested in reading. He was soon reading the works of famous authors like
William Shakespeare and Homer, and was well on his way to becoming one of America's
most well-known poets.
By the time Whitman was seventeen years old, he had already worked as a printer's
learner, a worker, and a learning games to help his students with spelling and maths. In his early twenties, however, he gave up teaching to
pursue(追求)a full-time
career as a journalist and poet.
When Walt Whitman first appeared as a poet, his arrival onto the American
literary scene was met with controversy. His first collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, was so unusual that no commercial
publisher would print the work. In 1855 Whitman published, at his own expense, the first
edition of his collection of twelve poems.
Whitman's poetic style was uncommon in the sense that he wrote poems in a
form called parallelism(对句法), in which his goal was to copy the flow of the sea and the quickly-passing
nature of human emotion. A common theme in Whitman's poetry is self-realization. In his works, Whitman moves from conventional patterns
of rhyme to create a unique rhythm and a multi-layered, but truly American voice.
"Although Whitman was considered a revolutionary by
many, there is little doubt he loved his country deeply." In his writing, he used slang(俚语)and various images, or voices,
to create a sense of national unity.
For Whitman, the "proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he
has absorbed it." Whitman has undoubtedly become a part of the cultural history and image
of America.
(1)
Paragraph 2 mainly talks about .
A . Whitman's education
B . Whitman's early career
C . how Whitman became a poet
D . why Whitman's poems were popular
(2)
When Whitman first appeared as a poet, .
A . he received a warm welcome
B . his literary road was not easy
C . he became famous for his unusual style
D . his poetic style was copied by other poets
(3)
What was Whitman's greatest literary contribution?
A . He expressed human emotions in his writing.
B . He showed the flow of the sea in his poems.
C . He used slang to show his love for his country.
D . He created a unique rhythm and an American voice.
答案: B
B
D