Reading poems is not exactly an everyday activity for most people. In fact, many people never read a poem once they get out of high school.
It is worth reminding ourselves that this has not always been the case in America. In the nineteenth century, a usual American activity was to sit around the fireplace in the evening and read poems aloud. It is true that there was no television at the time, nor movie theatres, nor World Wide Web, to provide diversion. However, poems were a source of pleasure, of self-education, of connection to other people or to the world beyond one’s own community. Reading them was a social act as well as an individual one, and perhaps even more social than individual. Writing poems to share with friends and relations was, like reading poems by the fireside, another way in which poetry had a place in everyday life.
How did things change? Why are most Americans no longer comfortable with poetry, and why do most people today think that a poem has nothing to tell them and they can do well without poems?
There are, I believe, three culprits (肇事者): poets, teachers and we ourselves. Of these, the least important is the third: the world surrounding the poem has betrayed (背叛) us more than we have betrayed the poem. Early in the twentieth century, poetry in English headed into directions hostile (不利的) to the reading of poetry. Readers decided that poems were not for the fireside or the easy chair at night, that they belonged where other difficult-to-read things belonged.
Poets failed the readers, so did the teachers. They want their students to know something about the craft (技巧) of a poem, and they want their students to see that poems mean something. Yet what usually occurs when teachers push these concerns on their high school students is that young people decide poems are unpleasant crossword puzzles.
小题1: Reading poems is thought to be a social act in the nineteenth century because _______.
A．it built a link among people
B．it helped unite a community
C．it was a source of self-education
D．it was a source of pleasure小题2:The underlined word “diversion” in Paragraph 2 most probably means _______.
A．diversity
B．change
C．amusements
D．happiness小题3:In the last paragraph, the writer questions _______.
A．the difficulty in studying poems
B．the way poems are taught in school
C．students’ wrong ideas about poetry
D．the techniques used in writing poems小题4:According to the passage, what is the main cause of the great gap between readers and poetry?
A．Poems have become difficult to understand.
B．Students are poorly educated in high school.
C．TV and the Internet are more attractive than poetry.
D．Students are becoming less interested in poetry.
