Elisa New on Poetry in America and Beyond (Ep. 43)
I am here today with Elisa New, up in Brookline.
今天我和 Elisa New 一起来到布鲁克莱恩。
She is a professor of poetry at Harvard University and now producer, director, host, and star of the new PBS series Poetry in America.
她是哈佛大学诗歌教授，现任 PBS 新系列《美国诗歌》的制片人、导演、主持人和明星。
Elisa, very nice to be with you.
埃莉莎，很高兴和你在一起。
Great to be here, Tyler.
很高兴来到这里，泰勒。
Thanks so much.
非常感谢。
To get into poetry, let me start with the question of what it is you all argue or disagree about.
为了进入诗歌，让我从你们争论或不同意的问题开始。
Let’s start with different interpretations of Emily Dickinson.
让我们从对艾米莉·狄金森的不同解读开始。
I’m going to give you a few people who’ve written about Emily Dickinson, and you help us see what is contested in the world of Emily Dickinson scholarship, and what’s really at stake.
我将给你们介绍一些写过艾米莉·狄金森的人，你们可以帮助我们了解艾米莉·狄金森学术界存在哪些争议，以及真正的利害关系。
Take Martha Nell Smith.
以玛莎·内尔·史密斯为例。
How would you describe her approach to Dickinson?
你如何描述她对待狄金森的态度？
What does she bring out?
她带来了什么？
I had no idea you would be examining me, but I will do my best.
我不知道你会检查我，但我会尽力而为。
Martha Nell Smith is one of those critics who reminds us that it’s really important to pay attention to the fact that Dickinson never actually published, except in the eccentric manuscripts we call “fascicles,” manuscripts that are collected at Harvard University and at Amherst University.
玛莎·内尔·史密斯（Martha Nell Smith）是批评家之一，她提醒我们，关注狄金森从未真正出版过的事实非常重要，除了我们称之为“分册”的古怪手稿，即哈佛大学和阿默斯特大学收集的手稿。
Martha Nell Smith is one of those critics who says that we should think of these manuscripts as visual texts, as almost texts in the visual arts.
玛莎·内尔·史密斯是批评家之一，她说我们应该将这些手稿视为视觉文本，就像视觉艺术中的文本一样。
Like a calligrapher?
像书法家吗？
Yes, that the calligraphy matters, and that Dickinson was using the page almost as a dancer would create choreography.
是的，书法很重要，而且狄金森使用这页纸几乎就像舞者创作舞蹈一样。
So those who believe that we can actually understand Dickinson by reading the standardized punctuation marks that other editors have affixed to these beautiful and original texts, those other scholars sometimes come in for scouring and scorching criticism by the Martha Nell Smiths of the world.
因此，那些相信我们可以通过阅读其他编辑在这些美丽而原创的文本上附加的标准化标点符号来真正理解狄金森的人，这些其他学者有时会受到世界上玛莎·内尔·史密斯的严厉批评。
Dickinson’s dashes.
狄金森的破折号。
Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
哈佛大学霍顿图书馆，剑桥，马萨诸塞州
When I look at an Emily Dickinson poem and I see all those dashes, what do the dashes mean — because other poets typically don’t use them — in your view?
当我看艾米莉·狄金森的一首诗时，我看到所有这些破折号，这些破折号是什么意思 —— 因为其他诗人通常不使用它们 —— 在你看来？
They evolve for me.
它们为我而进化。
Sometimes they give the poetry an appropriately spasmodic gait .
有时他们给诗歌带来适当的痉挛步态。
Sometimes they feel like stitches of pain or of effort.
有时它们感觉像是痛苦或努力的缝合。
They remind us that the poem is being written, is being composed.
它们提醒我们，这首诗正在被写出来，正在被创作出来。
Sometimes they remind me of the thread Dickinson used to stitch her little books together.
有时它们让我想起狄金森用来将她的小书缝合在一起的线。
There are critics who note that some of them point up and some of them point down and that they seem as much accent marks or musical kinds of notation.
有些评论家指出，有些符号向上，有些符号向下，它们看起来就像重音符号或音乐符号。
I love them.
我爱他们。
I actually am agnostic or lax about them.
我实际上对它们是不可知论或松懈的。
I like them short as R.
我喜欢它们像R一样短。
W.
W.
Franklin makes her dashes.
富兰克林冲刺。
I like them long as Thomas Johnson does, and I like looking at them in the manuscripts.
我和托马斯·约翰逊一样喜欢它们，而且我喜欢在手稿中查看它们。
Let’s say now I read Camille Paglia, who’s been a guest in the series.
假设现在我读了卡米尔·帕格利亚（Camille Paglia），她是该系列的嘉宾。
She’ll tell me Dickinson is all about homoeroticism, sadomasochistic surrealism, and brains being split open.
她会告诉我狄金森的全部内容都是关于同性恋、施虐受虐的超现实主义和大脑被劈开的。
Is that correct, and where does she differ from your view?
这是正确的吗？她与你的观点有何不同？
I like that, too!
我也喜欢这样！
Brains being split open, for sure — that Dickinson is a poet of trauma.
大脑被劈开，毫无疑问——狄金森是一位描写创伤的诗人。
When I say “trauma,” she’s a poet who will say that the sound of the robins or the look of the daffodils mangles her, that she’s sometimes without boundaries, without filters, without protections, and she tunes up sensory experience so, so high that “I felt a Funeral in my Brain,” she says.
当我说“创伤”时，她是一位诗人，她会说知更鸟的声音或水仙花的样子让她心碎，她有时没有界限，没有过滤器，没有保护，她把感官体验调整得如此之高，以至于“我在我的大脑中感受到了一场葬礼，”她说。
There are a whole bunch of brain poems that take us to that place where we see an image that’s unbearable.
有一大堆脑诗将我们带到了我们看到难以忍受的图像的地方。
We feel a headache that is tearing us open.
我们感到头痛欲裂。
We have a thought that suddenly crashes into other thoughts.
我们的一个想法突然与其他想法相冲突。
Homoeroticism, maybe.
也许是同性恋。
I am of those who think Emily Dickinson was a lifelong virgin who lived in her head.
我属于那些认为艾米莉·狄金森是一位生活在她脑海中的终生处女的人。
Much of the erotic life is in our heads, no matter who we touch.
无论我们接触谁，大部分的色情生活都存在于我们的头脑中。
Fair enough, but getting too literal about it with Dickinson seems to me to subtract somehow.
很公平，但在我看来，对狄金森的描述过于字面化似乎会有所减分。
Your colleague Helen Vendler, what would she stress in Dickinson?
你的同事海伦·文德勒（Helen Vendler），她在《狄金森》中会强调什么？
The exquisite craft of the individual poems.
个人诗歌的精湛技艺。
The extraordinary metaphors that just pay off and pay off and pay off.
这些非凡的隐喻会带来回报、回报、回报。
Like, “There’s a certain Slant of light / Winter Afternoons — / That oppresses, like the Heft / Of Cathedral Tunes — ”
就像，“有某种倾斜的光线/冬天的午后 — /令人压抑，就像大教堂曲调的分量 — ”
What kind of light is it that feels like music and that has weight?
什么样的光感觉像音乐并且有重量？
That is a feat of metaphoric derring-do of a kind that one finds in every line of Emily Dickinson’s.
这是艾米莉·狄金森的每一行诗中都可以找到的隐喻英勇行为的壮举。
In the poem I’ve just been quoting, she says that this light, “Heavenly Hurt, it gives us — / We can find no scar, / But internal difference — / Where the Meanings are — ”
在我刚才引用的那首诗中，她说这种光，“天堂般的伤害，它给了我们 — /我们找不到伤痕，/但内部差异 — /意义所在 — ”
What is it that justifies comparing light to sound, to weight is that somehow that synesthetic expression is more adequate to how great language feels in that place, wherever that is, “Where the Meanings are.” Helen is the most careful — and, thank heavens, the longest-lasting — New Critic who reminds us of all we gain by reading word by word.
将光与声音、重量进行比较的理由是，不知何故，联觉表达更适合于表达语言在那个地方的感觉，无论“意义所在”在哪里。海伦是最细心的——谢天谢地，她是最持久的——《新批评家》，她提醒我们逐字阅读所获得的一切。
In your own work, you’ve stressed seeing Dickinson as a kind of skeptical Kierkegaardian, decentering everything.
在你自己的作品中，你强调将狄金森视为一种持怀疑态度的克尔凯郭尔主义者，将一切都去中心化。
What is it that you’ve brought to this debate that you would stress now?
您在这场辩论中提出了哪些您现在要强调的内容？
Well, that was a long time ago when I called her a skeptical Kierkegaardian.
嗯，那是很久以前的事了，当时我称她为持怀疑态度的克尔凯郭尔主义者。
I think I did, and maybe I still would because everything’s at stake.
我想我做到了，也许我仍然会这样做，因为一切都处于危险之中。
Everything’s at risk in every second.
每时每刻一切都处于危险之中。
The poem is an experience that has never happened before in quite this way, and there is a leap, as Kierkegaard would have said, that every single Dickinson poem somehow constitutes.
这首诗是一种以前从未以这种方式发生过的体验，正如克尔凯郭尔所说，狄金森的每一首诗都以某种方式构成了一次飞跃。
You asked me, Tyler, in the very beginning about those dashes that seem also to act as the little frames or brackets.
泰勒，你一开始就问我那些似乎也充当小框架或括号的破折号。
They say, “This word, and no other.”
他们说：“就这个词，没有别的。”
There is, we might even say, an existential quality to these poems.
我们甚至可以说，这些诗歌具有存在主义的品质。
But what I said, what one says about a poet as great as Dickinson 30 years ago, and what I would say today is somewhat different.
但我所说的，30年前人们对狄金森这样一位伟大诗人的评价，和我今天所说的有些不同。
If we read Walt Whitman, his language is greatly different from that of Emily Dickinson, and the feel of his work is much more democratic.
如果我们读沃尔特·惠特曼，他的语言与艾米莉·狄金森的语言有很大不同，而且他的作品给人的感觉更加民主。
How is it that the overall political, economic, theological feel of Whitman connects with the way he uses language?
惠特曼的整体政治、经济、神学感觉是如何与他使用语言的方式联系起来的？
What’s the innovation in Whitman in that regard?
惠特曼在这方面有何创新？
Well, Whitman was a walker in the city.
嗯，惠特曼是城里的一个步行者。
Whitman came of age in Brooklyn at a moment when the modern urban metropolis that we can still see in the New York cityscape today in all of those 19th century buildings that are still there — when that was happening.
惠特曼在布鲁克林长大，当时我们仍然可以在纽约的城市景观中看到现代都市大都市的所有 19 世纪建筑仍然存在——当时这一切都发生了。
Whitman’s consciousness is educated by the vast architectural sprawl of his city, and then by all of the people who came flooding into this city, including not only northern Europeans from England and from the Netherlands, as Whitman’s family did, but runaway slaves from the South, and the Irish fleeing famine.
惠特曼的意识受到他城市的巨大建筑的教育，然后受到所有涌入这座城市的人的教育，其中不仅包括像惠特曼的家人那样来自英国和荷兰的北欧人，还包括来自南方的逃亡奴隶和逃离饥荒的爱尔兰人。
The whole stately procession and unstately bedraggled procession that begins to parade up and down Broadway with Barnum and Bailey’s — there was no Bailey — with P.T.
整个庄严的游行队伍和不庄重的、肮脏的游行队伍开始在百老汇大街上游行，巴纳姆和贝利的 ——没有贝利——和P.T.
Barnum’s circus opening in the Crystal Palace and the site of what would become Central Park.
巴纳姆的马戏团在水晶宫和后来成为中央公园的地方开幕。
How could you not have a democratic consciousness when so much diversity is just springing up around you at every second?
当如此多的多样性每时每刻都在你周围涌现时，你怎么可能没有民主意识呢？
That for me is the most powerful part of Whitman.
对我来说，这是惠特曼最有力的部分。
There’s nothing that isn’t powerful because I so adore him.
没有什么是不强大的，因为我非常崇拜他。
I think of Whitman as my rabbi.
我认为惠特曼是我的拉比。
But he was there at the beginning of American cities, and he has this fresh and original understanding of how a city wants to be a locus of democracy.
但他在美国城市诞生之初就在那里，他对城市如何成为民主中心有着新鲜而独到的理解。
On the best poets
论最好的诗人
Let me express a concern, and see if you can talk me out of it.
让我表达一下担忧，看看你能否说服我打消这个念头。
I’m going to use the word best, which I know many literary critics do not like, but I believe in the concept nonetheless.
我将使用“最好”这个词，我知道许多文学评论家不喜欢这个词，但我仍然相信这个概念。
In my view, the two best American poets are Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, and they were both a long, long time ago.
在我看来，美国最好的两位诗人是艾米丽·狄金森和沃尔特·惠特曼，他们都是很久很久以前的事了。
They were quite early in the literary history of this nation.
他们在这个国家的文学史上相当早。
Is that a statement about the fame-generating process, a statement about somehow their era was better at generating the best poets because we had a much smaller population, or am I simply wrong in thinking they’re the best American poets?
这是关于成名过程的陈述，还是关于他们的时代因为人口少得多而更能产生最好的诗人的陈述，或者我认为他们是最好的美国诗人是错误的？
I don’t know what to say to you.
我不知道该对你说什么。
I revere them.
我尊敬他们。
They are the most important poets for me.
他们是对我来说最重要的诗人。
They invent two ways of being a poet, and two of the ways that so many poets who have followed them also acknowledge.
他们发明了两种成为诗人的方式，而这两种方式也为许多追随他们的诗人所承认。
Would there be Hart Crane, Allen Ginsberg, Carl Sandburg, C.
会有哈特·克莱恩、艾伦·金斯伯格、卡尔·桑德堡、C.
D.
D .
Wright, C.
赖特，C.
K.
K.
Williams?
威廉姆斯？
Would there be any of those — Frank O’Hara — without Walt Whitman?
如果没有沃尔特·惠特曼，还会有这些——“弗兰克·奥哈拉”——吗？
And they would be the first to say, “No.”
他们会是第一个说“不”的人。
Would there be Susan Howe, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath?
会有苏珊·豪、玛丽安·摩尔、伊丽莎白·毕肖普、西尔维娅·普拉斯吗？
All in different ways, would we have them without Emily Dickinson?
一切以不同的方式出现，如果没有艾米莉·狄金森，我们还会拥有它们吗？
I don’t know.
我不知道。
I’m not sure I can enter .
我不确定我是否可以进入。
.
。
.
。
Is it that we’ve lost it?
是不是我们已经失去了它？
I don’t think that’s it.
我认为不是这样的。
I don’t think we’ve lost it.
我不认为我们已经失去了它。
I turn to European history, again using the “best” word, but it’s plausible to think Homer and Dante are the two best European poets ever in some regards, and they, too, are each quite early in a particular stage of history.
我转向欧洲历史，再次使用“最好”这个词，但认为荷马和但丁在某些方面是有史以来最好的两位欧洲诗人是合理的，而且他们也都处于特定历史阶段的早期。
What is it about poetry that seems to generate so many people as at least plausible bests who come at the very beginnings of eras?
是什么让诗歌在时代之初产生了这么多人，至少是看似最好的诗歌？
Well, isn’t it that poetry is cumulative, and canons are cumulative, and those who are there first, they’re never superseded — unlike, say, for economists who would say, “Adam Smith is a really smart guy, but it’s not like we go to Adam Smith to understand Bitcoin.” They would say, “No. That knowledge has been superseded.”
嗯，诗歌不是可以累积的，经典也是可以累积的，那些先行者，永远不会被取代 ——不像经济学家会说，“亚当·斯密是一个非常聪明的人，但我们不像亚当·斯密那样去理解比特币。”他们会说：“不。那些知识已经被取代了。”
In literary knowledge, we continue to learn from our predecessors and also continue to feel awe before the persistence of certain phenomena that they .
在文学知识上，我们不断地向前人学习，也不断地对他们所坚持的某些现象感到敬畏。
.
。
.
。
Shakespeare saw that Iago was a slippery-mouthed conniver of a kind we still recognize.
莎士比亚认为伊阿古是一个我们至今仍认识的狡猾的密谋者。
We recognize ourselves.
我们认识自己。
We recognize something enduringly human in these oldest of poets, and then, maybe, we elevate them even more.
我们在这些最古老的诗人身上发现了一些持久的人性，然后，也许我们会进一步提升他们。
On the elasticity of American English
论美式英语的弹性
Is it possible that American English isn’t rich enough?
难道美式英语还不够丰富？
I find if I go to Ireland, or especially to Trinidad, I envy the language they have there.
我发现如果我去爱尔兰，尤其是特立尼达，我会羡慕他们那里的语言。
They’re both speaking English.
他们都说英语。
If you think of America today, there’s texting, now a long history of television.
如果你想到今天的美国，就会想到短信，现在电视也有悠久的历史。
Our language is great for quick communication, number one in the world for science.
我们的语言非常适合快速交流，在科学方面排名世界第一。
Now there’s social media.
现在有了社交媒体。
Nineteenth-century American English has longer sentences.
十九世纪的美式英语有更长的句子。
It’s arguably more like British English.
它可以说更像英式英语。
Isn’t the problem just the language we grow up with around us isn’t somehow good enough to sustain first-rate poets?
问题不正是我们成长过程中所使用的语言不足以支撑一流诗人的诞生吗？
It is.
这是。
It’s so rich.
真是太丰富了。
I love the way it evolves, the way my kids don’t say “whatever” anymore.
我喜欢它的发展方式，我的孩子不再说“随便”。
“Whatever” had such incredible potency.
“无论如何”具有如此令人难以置信的效力。
“Epic.” When they started to say “epic” had such potency.
“史诗。”当他们开始说“史诗”有如此效力时。
When hip-hop artists say, “That’s really ill.”
当嘻哈艺术家说“这真是病态”时。
I love the fertility of slang.
我喜欢俚语的丰富性。
I love the way mass culture, and its technological limitations, and then its new breaths does funny things to language.
我喜欢大众文化的方式，及其技术限制，然后它的新气息给语言带来了有趣的事情。
I tell my students about this.
我告诉我的学生这件事。
I say, “You know the way how in ’30s movies, the women are always sweeping around going, ‘Oh, darling,’ in The Thin Man, and there’s this ‘Hi, honey .
我说，“你知道，在 30 年代的电影中，女人们总是四处走动，‘哦，亲爱的’，在《瘦人》中，还有‘嗨，亲爱的……’。
.
。
.’” If you watch a ’30s movie, and then you watch a ’50s movie, and you see the plasticity and the ingenuity that human beings put into .
”如果你看一部 30 年代的电影，然后再看一部 50 年代的电影，你会看到人类所投入的可塑性和独创性。
.
。
.
。
We don’t say, “Hey, kid.” We don’t call anyone a kid anymore.
我们不会说：“嘿，孩子。”我们不再称任何人为孩子。
It sounds really archaic and corny.
听起来确实很古老而且老套。
Unless it’s a kid.
除非是个孩子。
Well, we might say “kid.” But for me, it’s not “Is it better or worse?” but “Is it moving?
好吧，我们可能会说“孩子”。但对我来说，这不是“更好还是更糟？”但是“它在动吗？
Is the language refreshing itself?” John Ashbery, whom we lost recently — it could be that John Ashbery 100 years from now is going to seem crystal clear to those generations.
语言本身是否令人耳目一新？”我们最近失去了约翰·阿什伯里（John Ashbery）——也许 100 年后的约翰·阿什伯里（John Ashbery）对那些世代来说会显得一清二楚。
I don’t think so.
我不这么认为。
Well, he might seem crystal clear because we will be accustomed to thinking in the cut-up way, in the media-fied way that he saw earlier than the rest of us.
好吧，他可能看起来非常清楚，因为我们会习惯于以他比我们其他人更早看到的方式、以媒体化的方式思考。
Who knows?
谁知道？
I don’t get a lot by making lists, myself, of the best.
我自己列出最好的名单并没有得到很多好处。
I have a craving for the new and the fresh as well as for the old .
我对新事物和旧事物都有渴望。
.
。
.
。
I guess I said some of this before.
我想我之前已经说过一些了。
What we love about the greatest poets is that, as Emerson says, they echo back our own thoughts with “alienated majesty.” It’s the most familiar things they say that we are moved by the most.
正如爱默生所说，我们喜爱最伟大诗人的原因在于，他们以“异化的威严”回应我们自己的思想。他们说的都是我们最熟悉、最感动的事情。
Which is more interesting, Instagram poetry or Facebook poetry?
Instagram 诗歌和 Facebook 诗歌哪个更有趣？
I’m not going to be a good judge of that.
我不会对此做出好的判断。
Like many people, I have to figure out what filters I need in order to survive in the world, and I am not a social media devotee.
像许多人一样，我必须弄清楚我需要什么过滤器才能在世界上生存，而且我不是社交媒体爱好者。
But I am all for pushing poetry, trying poetry on all of these different platforms and in all forms of media.
但我完全赞成推动诗歌，在所有这些不同的平台和所有形式的媒体上尝试诗歌。
Rupi Kaur from Canada — she has two million Instagram followers.
来自加拿大的 Rupi Kaur——她在 Instagram 上拥有 200 万粉丝。
A year ago, her book was number two for the whole year.
一年前，她的书排名全年第二。
She sold more copies than Hillary Clinton did.
她的销量比希拉里·克林顿还要多。
She was 77 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers lists.
她连续 77 周登上《纽约时报》畅销书排行榜。
She probably is not in many poetry anthologies.
她可能不在很多诗歌选集中。
Most of her poems are a few lines long.
她的大部分诗都是几行长。
What are we supposed to think of this?
对此我们应该怎么想呢？
Is she the world’s leading poet right now, rap music aside?
除了说唱音乐之外，她现在是世界领先的诗人吗？
Again, I’m not an economist — although married to one.
再说一次，我不是经济学家——尽管我嫁给了一位经济学家。
I wouldn’t trust the moment’s market on poetry.
我不相信当前的诗歌市场。
I would say this about many things: we are in the middle of an interesting kind of generational shift, where a younger generation that’s grown up on Facebook and on a lot of sharing and a lot of sociality wants to hear about the personal lives of their peers.
我对很多事情都这么说：我们正处于一种有趣的代际转变之中，在 Facebook、大量分享和大量社交中长大的年轻一代希望了解同龄人的个人生活。
And I haven’t figured it out.
我还没弄清楚。
It doesn’t seem to me that I have the right tools.
在我看来，我没有合适的工具。
I feel too old.
我感觉自己太老了。
Do you worry about the dominant economic role of the poetry anthology for generating royalties?
您是否担心诗歌选集在产生版税方面的主导经济作用？
If you’re a poet, as you know, it’s hard to sell a lot of book copies if you’re not, say, on Instagram with a lot of followers.
如您所知，如果您是一名诗人，如果您不在 Instagram 上拥有大量粉丝，就很难卖出大量书籍。
You get a poem in one of the anthologies.
你在其中一本选集中得到一首诗。
That’s a fairly centralized market.
这是一个相当集中的市场。
Do we have a funny market structure for poetry, where there’s one part, far too centralized, run by anthologies, driven by classroom use — and then another part that’s a kind of Malthusian equilibrium.
我们是否有一个有趣的诗歌市场结构，其中一部分过于集中，由选集运营，由课堂使用驱动——而另一部分则是一种马尔萨斯均衡。
Everyone writing poetry on the internet.
每个人都在互联网上写诗。
Hardly anyone earning anything.
几乎没有人能赚到钱。
And then you have a few poets, driven by their celebrity status, who earn a lot of money.
还有一些诗人在名人地位的驱使下赚了很多钱。
But it’s a feast-or-famine situation.
但这是一个盛宴或饥荒的情况。
There’s not a healthy middle of the market.
市场不存在健康的中间部分。
In the arts, has there ever been a healthy middle of the market?
在艺术领域，曾经存在过健康的中间市场吗？
Arts are not restaurants, right?
艺术不是餐馆，对吧？
Restaurants — there’s the top, there’s the bottom, and there’s the middle.
餐馆 —— 有顶部，有底部，还有中间。
Artists have always depended on either patronage or somebody driven for love of something other than the art itself to get themselves distributed.
艺术家总是依靠赞助或出于对艺术本身以外的事物的热爱而获得传播。
I don’t think one becomes a poet in order to earn a living.
我不认为一个人成为诗人是为了谋生。
I’m not sure there’s any poet — including Billy Collins, whom I like very much, and whose work I admire very much — who can earn a living writing poetry.
我不确定有哪个诗人——包括我非常喜欢的比利·柯林斯，我非常欣赏他的作品——能够以写诗为生。
Happily for our culture, what many of the great poets in the culture do is they teach, which I think is a really important role for creative people.
对于我们的文化来说，幸运的是，文化中许多伟大诗人所做的就是教学，我认为这对于有创造力的人来说是一个非常重要的角色。
I’m not sure there’s any poet…who can earn a living writing poetry.
我不确定有哪个诗人……可以靠写诗谋生。
Happily for our culture, what many of the great poets in the culture do is they teach, which I think is a really important role for creative people.
对于我们的文化来说，幸运的是，文化中许多伟大诗人所做的就是教学，我认为这对于有创造力的人来说是一个非常重要的角色。
Wallace Stevens worked for an insurance company.
华莱士·史蒂文斯在一家保险公司工作。
Yeah, he did.
是的，他做到了。
William Carlos Williams was a doctor.
威廉·卡洛斯·威廉姆斯是一名医生。
Dana Gioia was in the food business.
达纳·乔亚 (Dana Gioia) 从事食品行业。
Are too many poets today in the academy?
现在学院里的诗人太多了吗？
Are too many poets in the .
诗人太多了。
.
。
.
。
Too removed from the worries of everyday life, too tenured.
太远离日常生活的忧虑，太长久了。
Do you agree or not?
你同意还是不同意？
Should they be out on whaling ships?
他们应该去捕鲸船吗？
I think I should be.
我想我应该是的。
I think I can speak for myself here.
我想我可以在这里为自己说话。
I have stepped out of the academy by finding a way, a format, a distribution channel, and accepting the limitations of 24 minutes in order to speak to doctors, lawyers, postal workers, delivery people.
我走出了学院，找到了一种方式、一种形式、一种传播渠道，并接受了24分钟的限制，以便与医生、律师、邮政工人、送货员交谈。
I have said, “We who have lived in the academy ought to get out a bit.” I can say for myself, I’m very happy to have gotten out in the world.
我说过：“我们这些在学院里生活过的人，应该出去走走。”我可以对自己说，我很高兴能够走出这个世界。
What I have learned is that one doesn’t need very special equipment or even a lot of technical knowledge to read a poem, even a difficult poem, with deep understanding.
我学到的是，不需要非常特殊的设备，甚至不需要很多技术知识，就能深刻理解一首诗，即使是一首很难的诗。
What do you think of the notion of poets who do harm?
您如何看待诗人造成伤害的概念？
T.
T。
S.
S。
Eliot, for instance — he claimed Milton, whom he thought was a great poet, but did more harm to 18th century poetry than either Dryden or Pope.
以艾略特为例，他声称弥尔顿是一位伟大的诗人，但他对 18 世纪诗歌的危害比德莱顿或蒲柏更大。
Are there poets today — great though they may be — who are in a sense doing harm to poetry?
今天是否有诗人——“尽管他们可能很伟大——”在某种意义上对诗歌造成了伤害？
And how should we think about that?
我们应该如何思考这个问题？
Are there poets doing harm to poetry?
有诗人在损害诗歌吗？
I think T.
我认为T。
S.
S。
Eliot was too fastidious about such matters.
艾略特对这些事情太挑剔了。
Poetry survived John Milton just fine.
诗歌在约翰·弥尔顿之后幸存下来。
I would rather ask the question, “Ask not what poetry can do for you, ask what you can do for poetry.” Or ask what poetry can do for the world.
我宁愿问这样的问题：“不要问诗歌能为你做什么，而要问你能为诗歌做什么。”或者问诗歌能为世界做什么。
Ask why we need poetry.
问我们为什么需要诗歌。
William Carlos Williams, who did not like T.
威廉·卡洛斯·威廉姆斯，他不喜欢T.
S.
S。
Eliot, reminded us that — what did he say?
艾略特，提醒我们 — 他说了什么？
People die every day for want of what?
每天都有人因为缺乏什么而死去？
Poetry, what poetry can offer, by which he meant a way of thinking about the wrenching complexities and compromises that we all make every day.
诗歌，诗歌所能提供的，他指的是一种思考我们每天都会做出的痛苦的复杂性和妥协的方式。
Was Samuel Johnson right that no person ever wished Milton’s “Paradise Lost” to be longer than it was?
塞缪尔·约翰逊说没有人希望弥尔顿的《失乐园》比现在更长，这句话对吗？
I did not wish it longer myself.
我自己也不想再这样了。
Poe said that no poem should be longer than 108 lines; 108 lines, Poe calculated, was exactly the maximum amount that you could read in one sitting.
坡说诗的长度不应超过 108 行；爱伦·坡计算出，108 行正是你一次可以阅读的最大数量。
He thought that poetry should have that kind of experiential, explosive pow effect, and that anything longer than 108 lines couldn’t have that.
他认为诗歌应该具有那种体验性的、爆炸性的战俘效果，而任何超过108行的诗就不可能有这种效果。
But by that criterion we wouldn’t have Dante’s .
但按照这个标准，我们不会有但丁的。
.
。
.
。
Or Walt Whitman.
或者沃尔特·惠特曼。
Or Walt Whitman, although I would never recommend reading “Song of Myself” in one sitting at all.
或者沃尔特·惠特曼，尽管我根本不建议一口气读完《我自己的歌》。
I think a poem like “Song of Myself,” these 52 parts, is a poem for a lifetime, and many, many occasions of casual browsing on the grass, and not a poem that you just grind through.
我认为像《我自己的歌》这样的52个部分的诗，是一首适合一生、无数次在草地上随意浏览的诗，而不是一首你可以磨练的诗。
We’ll get back to poetry, but let’s try a few questions about America, and as always, feel free to pass anything you don’t want to cover.
我们将回到诗歌，但让我们尝试一些有关美国的问题，并且一如既往，随意通过任何你不想涵盖的内容。
We’re up here in New England.
我们在新英格兰。
It’s wonderful.
太棒了。
It’s a beautiful day.
这是美好的一天。
If New England is so wonderful, why is it depopulating?
如果新英格兰如此美好，为什么它的人口却在减少？
I didn’t know that.
我不知道。
It is.
这是。
It’s expensive to live here, but I actually have no idea.
住在这里很贵，但我实际上不知道。
What you make me think of is the 1890s, when New England was depopulating because the mills were shutting down, and the textile industry was moving out of New England.
你让我想起了 1890 年代，当时新英格兰的人口正在减少，因为工厂关闭，纺织工业正在迁出新英格兰。
What’s happening now?
现在发生了什么？
People are moving to the South, basically.
基本上，人们正在向南方迁移。
We’re getting older.
我们正在变老。
There seems to be a strong preference for sun for all age groups, and this, to me, is surprising.
所有年龄段的人似乎都对阳光有强烈的偏好，这对我来说是令人惊讶的。
I like it here.
我喜欢这里。
Why would anyone ever have wanted to be a Puritan?
为什么有人想成为清教徒？
That’s a great question.
这是一个很好的问题。
That’s a terrific question and one that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about.
这是一个很棒的问题，我花了很多时间思考。
Being a Puritan is a great way to live a psychologically very candid life, if what you want is actually not to be repressed at all.
如果你想要的实际上是根本不被压抑的话，成为一名清教徒是一种在心理上非常坦诚的生活的好方法。
We think of the Puritans as very repressed, but instead, you want to be marinating in and giving a lot of attention to all of your own insecurities and sense of, “I goofed that up.
我们认为清教徒非常压抑，但相反，你想要沉浸在自己的不安全感和“我搞砸了”的感觉中，并给予很多关注。
I messed that one up.
我把那件事搞砸了。
Oh, that didn’t work out very well.” If you want to cultivate your inner life, it’s really great to be a Puritan.
哦，那效果不太好。”如果你想培养你的内心生活，成为一名清教徒真是太好了。
We think of the Puritans as very repressed, but instead, you want to be marinating in and giving a lot of attention to all of your own insecurities and sense of, “I goofed that up.
我们认为清教徒非常压抑，但相反，你想要沉浸在自己的不安全感和“我搞砸了”的感觉中，并给予很多关注。
I messed that one up.
我把那件事搞砸了。
Oh, that didn’t work out very well.” If you want to cultivate your inner life, it’s really great to be a Puritan.
哦，那效果不太好。”如果你想培养你的内心生活，成为一名清教徒真是太好了。
If you want to live a kind of high-octane life of extremes, you want to feel the exultation of a day like this in New England, where the green of the grass and the blue of the sky announce to you that God’s creation is the most eloquent of all creations.
如果你想过一种极端的高辛烷值生活，你想在新英格兰感受这样一天的狂喜，那里青青的草地和蓝色的天空向你宣告上帝的创造是所有创造中最雄辩的。
If that’s what you’re after, that kind of intensity, New England Puritanism is a really good religion for you.
如果这就是你所追求的，那种强度，新英格兰清教主义对你来说是一个非常好的宗教。
I’ve just been paraphrasing Jonathan Edwards, who, even though he was the writer who said that we were spiders hung over the fire who would sizzle on a .
我刚刚解释了乔纳森·爱德华兹，尽管他是作家，他说我们是悬挂在火上的蜘蛛，会在……上发出嘶嘶声。
.
。
.
。
I think it’s Robert Lowell who said that we would sizzle on a brick.
我想是罗伯特·洛厄尔说我们会在砖头上发出嘶嘶声。
He said we’re spiders hung over the fire — also wrote these gorgeous lyrical essays on the natural world that drew from aesthetic experience, increased piety.
他说我们是挂在火上的蜘蛛——还写了这些关于自然世界的华丽抒情文章，这些文章借鉴了审美经验，增加了虔诚。
If you like intensity rather than moderation or serenity, if you like intensity, a Puritan’s a good thing to be.
如果你喜欢强度而不是温和或平静，如果你喜欢强度，清教徒是件好事。
On whether American art is overrated
关于美国艺术是否被高估
If we think about America, it’s the world’s wealthiest nation, most powerful nation.
如果我们想想美国，它是世界上最富有的国家、最强大的国家。
It has a disproportionate share of the top universities, including, of course, Harvard.
它在顶尖大学中占有不成比例的份额，当然也包括哈佛大学。
Is this going to mean that, in essence, most things American are overrated?
这是否意味着从本质上讲，美国的大多数事物都被高估了？
More people read English, so if you’re an American author or American poet, people will study you.
更多的人阅读英语，所以如果你是美国作家或美国诗人，人们就会研究你。
They will write about you, and compared to, say, Neruda and Mistral from Chile, or writers, poets from other parts of the world, American artists, maybe they’re all overrated, overpriced.
他们会写关于你的文章，与智利的聂鲁达和米斯特拉尔，或者来自世界其他地区的作家、诗人、美国艺术家相比，也许他们都被高估了，定价过高。
Do you agree?
你同意？
I don’t know.
我不知道。
I’m having trouble with these valuation questions that American poets are overpriced .
我对美国诗人被高估的这些估值问题感到困惑。
.
。
.
。
American movies, American artworks.
美国电影，美国艺术品。
There’s simply more money chasing after them and more attention because we’re America.
只是因为我们是美国，所以有更多的钱在追逐他们，也有更多的关注。
You would probably be better at answering that question than I am.
你可能比我更擅长回答这个问题。
When I turn on Netflix, I’m often curious about unfamiliar worlds.
当我打开 Netflix 时，我常常对陌生的世界感到好奇。
Think about the Nordic noir, the new emergence of these serial spy shows that take us into Oslo and Stockholm.
想想北欧黑色电影，这些新出现的连续间谍剧将我们带入奥斯陆和斯德哥尔摩。
They’re so fascinating.
他们太迷人了。
But I don’t think that answers your question.
但我认为这不能回答你的问题。
A question related to your mentor, or one of your mentors, Ann Douglas.
一个与你的导师或你的导师之一安·道格拉斯有关的问题。
As you know, the mid- to late 19th century was, at the time, seen as an era of a kind of extreme feminization.
如你所知，19世纪中后期在当时被视为一种极端女性化的时代。
I don’t think we today would view it in those terms, but they did.
我认为我们今天不会用这些术语来看待它，但他们却这样做了。
Do you see any parallels between that time and the world today?
您认为那个时代和今天的世界有什么相似之处吗？
That’s a very interesting question.
这是一个非常有趣的问题。
That was a curveball.
那是一个曲线球。
Thinking back to my wonderful mentor’s work, The Feminization of American Culture, where Ann Douglas offered a critique of a sentimentalization of female experience that excluded, in her mind, and ended up marginalizing whole other orders of experience like that so brilliantly exposited by Herman Melville.
回想一下我的导师的精彩著作《美国文化的女性化》，安·道格拉斯在其中对女性体验的感伤化提出了批评，在她看来，这种感伤主义排斥并最终边缘化了赫尔曼·梅尔维尔如此精彩阐述的所有其他经验秩序。
The literature of the period tended to exclude the experience of the outside world and to focus on the experiences most women had within the domestic realm.
这一时期的文学倾向于排除外部世界的经历，而关注大多数女性在家庭领域的经历。
Do I think that right now we are in a period of feminization?
我认为现在我们正处于女性化时期吗？
Once again, things are happening so fast that I don’t know.
再一次，事情发生得如此之快，以至于我不知道。
We’re certainly in one of those moments when we are reckoning, in all sorts of ways that contradict each other, with what it is to be men, women, or in-between.
我们肯定正处于这样的时刻之一，我们以各种相互矛盾的方式思考什么是男人、女人或中间人。
What’s a book you would recommend for people to read about America that would help them understand this country that’s maybe not so well known?
您会向人们推荐哪一本有关美国的书，以帮助他们了解这个可能不太为人所知的国家？
The book I would recommend is The Scarlet Letter, and it is well known, but not well read.
我推荐的书是《红字》，这本书众所周知，但读得不多。
I think The Scarlet Letter is as relevant today in the #MeToo era, and has been for decades informative and enlightening for me as I’ve watched a social hunger for the toppling of the mighty, right?
我认为《红字》在今天的#MeToo时代同样具有现实意义，并且几十年来它一直为我提供丰富的信息和启发，就像我目睹了社会对推翻强权的渴望一样，对吧？
We love both to revere those who may not deserve our reverence and to pull down anyone who is available.
我们既喜欢尊敬那些可能不值得我们尊敬的人，也喜欢拉低任何有能力的人。
So I would recommend that one.
所以我会推荐那个。
To understand some of our diversity threats in a way that might cool us down a little bit, I would recommend Willa Cather.
为了以一种可能让我们冷静下来的方式了解我们的一些多样性威胁，我会推荐威拉·凯瑟（Willa Cather）。
Willa Cather, who writes about the American Midwest, which we don’t think of.
威拉·凯瑟（Willa Cather）写的是我们没有想到的美国中西部地区。
We think of the Midwest as where all the Americans are.
我们认为中西部是所有美国人的聚集地。
In My Antonia, which I taught a few weeks ago, she writes about the Midwest when it was being populated by Norwegians, Bohemians, who were Austro-Hungarians.
在我几周前教过的《我的安东尼娅》中，她写到了中西部的情况，当时那里居住着挪威人、波西米亚人、奥匈帝国人。
When all of the people from middle and northern Europe were settling the Midwest, and there was ethnic pandemonium right there in the middle.
当所有来自中欧和北欧的人都在中西部定居时，中间出现了种族混乱。
That the struggles, that our disagreements and unease about difference have always been with us, are not regionally specific.
我们的斗争、分歧和对差异的不安一直伴随着我们，并且不具有地域性。
There aren’t really red states and blue states.
并不存在真正的红州和蓝州。
They’re just at this moment redder and bluer.
它们只是此时更红和更蓝。
I think we can all profit from reading Willa Cather.
我认为我们都可以从阅读威拉·凯瑟的作品中受益。
Let me toss out the names of a few poets, and tell us either why they’re important to you or what you would direct our attention toward or give us some kind of deeper insight .
让我列出几位诗人的名字，然后告诉我们为什么他们对你很重要，或者你会把我们的注意力引向什么，或者给我们一些更深入的见解。
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I hope I get to say, “I don’t know.”
我希望我能说：“我不知道。”
Sure, but this one.
当然可以，但是这个。
Robert Frost.
罗伯特·弗罗斯特.
I love Robert Frost.
我爱罗伯特·弗罗斯特。
What I would direct your attention to is that he’s not a doddering old fart mumbling platitudes.
我要提醒你注意的是，他并不是一个老糊涂、咕哝着陈词滥调的老家伙。
He’s a radical.
他是一个激进分子。
He’s a radical poet who is teaching us again and again how much of our joy is mixed with pain, how much of our work and our joy in our work is charged with either integrated eroticism or repressed sexuality.
他是一位激进的诗人，一次又一次地教导我们，我们的快乐有多少是与痛苦混合在一起的，我们的工作和工作中的快乐有多少充满了综合性的情欲或压抑的性欲。
He’s extraordinary at looking dispassionately at how hard it is to be in a lifelong partnership.
他非常善于冷静地看待维持终生伴侣关系是多么困难。
His husbands and wives are so often mismatched and maladapted one to another and the natural world.
他的丈夫和妻子常常彼此不匹配、不适应，也不适应自然世界。
He’s a great inheritor of that Puritan tradition, even though he was born in California.
尽管他出生在加利福尼亚州，但他是清教徒传统的伟大继承者。
He embraced a New England ethos, which tells us it’s good to acknowledge our pain.
他拥护新英格兰精神，这种精神告诉我们承认自己的痛苦是件好事。
Switching to Topeka, Kansas, Gwendolyn Brooks.
切换到堪萨斯州托皮卡，格温多林·布鲁克斯。
What do I love?
我爱什么？
To say her homeliness would be the wrong word.
说她相貌平庸是错误的。
OK, so here’s the posture of a Gwendolyn Brooks speaker.
好的，这是格温多林·布鲁克斯演讲者的姿势。
She’s the woman looking out the window at the neighborhood and clucking her tongue or breathing a sigh of relief that things haven’t gotten worse.
她是那个望着窗外的邻居、咯咯地吐舌头或者松了一口气的女人，因为事情并没有变得更糟。
There is a mature knowledge in Gwendolyn Brooks of how communities and the individuals within them muddle along, and that some people are bound to go to jail and other people will somehow take care of each other, eating beans, eking out what happiness they can.
格温多林·布鲁克斯对社区和其中的个人如何混日子有着成熟的认识，有些人注定要进监狱，而另一些人会以某种方式互相照顾，吃豆子，尽力谋求幸福。
Gwendolyn Brooks somehow makes us care about people in straitened social circumstances to whom different things — often things they don’t deserve — will happen.
格温多林·布鲁克斯以某种方式让我们关心那些处于困境的社会环境中的人，他们会发生不同的事情——“通常是他们不应该得到的事情”。
Here’s a much tougher one, I think: Ezra Pound.
我认为这是一个更难的人：埃兹拉·庞德。
I’m not an Ezra Pound fan.
我不是埃兹拉·庞德的粉丝。
I, as a Jewish American, can’t really get past his anti-Semitism, and I’m not interested enough in the beautiful, musical effects that he produces by taking Provençal French and Homeric Greek and the American idiom and putting them together.
作为一名犹太裔美国人，我无法真正摆脱他的反犹太主义，而且我对他通过普罗旺斯法语、荷马希腊语和美国习语并将它们组合在一起而产生的美丽音乐效果没有足够的兴趣。
He is, for those who care about him, the technician par excellence who understands the native sounds of language and how to put them together.
对于那些关心他的人来说，他是一位卓越的技术人员，能够理解语言的母语发音以及如何将它们组合在一起。
But I like my poets to give me some wisdom, and I don’t find him wise.
但我喜欢我的诗人给我一些智慧，但我不认为他有智慧。
In general, how should we think about poets from the past who held highly objectionable views?
总的来说，我们应该如何看待那些持有非常令人反感观点的过去诗人呢？
T.
T。
S.
S。
Eliot maybe was less anti-Semitic than Pound, but not really on safe ground, either.
艾略特也许不像庞德那样反犹太，但也不是真正安全。
Picasso was a Communist, seems to have treated women very, very badly.
毕加索是一名共产党员，似乎对待女性非常非常恶劣。
Is there a general approach?
有通用的方法吗？
Is it case by case?
是个案吗？
I am not in the business of striking people off of reading lists or of striking people off of lists at all.
我根本不打算将人们从阅读列表中剔除，或者根本不将人们从列表中剔除。
For whatever reason, great art is often fertilized by bad character.
不管出于什么原因，伟大的艺术往往是由不良品格孕育出来的。
Hemingway wasn’t a very nice guy either, but man, he really could write some killer sentences, and I learn from them.
海明威也不是一个很好的人，但是他真的可以写出一些杀手级的句子，我向他们学习。
But I do think we get to all have taste, and some writers .
但我确实认为我们所有人都有品味，有些作家也是如此。
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。
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。
T.
T。
S.
S。
Eliot, probably because of the years he spent in Cambridge, I don’t find him very wise either.
艾略特，可能是因为他在剑桥度过的那些年，我也不觉得他很聪明。
Because of Cambridge?
因为剑桥？
Cambridge didn’t make him wise.
剑桥并没有让他变得明智。
It didn’t help him at all.
这对他一点帮助都没有。
T.
T。
S.
S。
Eliot was always a person of too much privilege and a person who made such bad choices.
艾略特总是一个拥有太多特权的人，也是一个做出如此错误选择的人。
The combination of so much privilege and such bad choices gives us the magnificent accident of “The Waste Land,” which is magnificent.
如此多的特权和如此糟糕的选择结合在一起，给我们带来了《荒原》的壮丽意外，这是壮丽的。
It bores me a bit.
这让我有点厌烦。
I loved it as a teenager, but when I try to read it again, I’m not that interested.
我十几岁的时候很喜欢它，但当我再次尝试阅读它时，我就没那么感兴趣了。
You know what I think, Tyler?
你知道我怎么想，泰勒？
I think we didn’t go through World War I so we can’t say.
我认为我们没有经历过第一次世界大战，所以我们不能说。
I do understand the T.
我确实理解T。
S.
S。
Eliot that incubated in Cambridge in 1913 because Cambridge in 2018 isn’t that different.
艾略特于 1913 年在剑桥孵化，因为 2018 年的剑桥并没有那么不同。
It’s really the same world.
这真的是同一个世界。
I think “The Waste Land” is the poet of a pretty privileged American who went to Europe and was really hoping that European civilization would hold together, and instead it was blowing itself to smithereens.
我认为《荒原》是一位相当享有特权的美国人的诗人，他去了欧洲，真心希望欧洲文明能够团结起来，但它却把自己炸成了碎片。
When I read Eliot next to the American modernists whom I prefer — I prefer Marianne Moore, I prefer William Carlos Williams, I prefer Hart Crane, I prefer Edna St. Vincent Millay — I think, “Well, they didn’t really do World War I, either.”
当我在我喜欢的美国现代主义者旁边阅读艾略特时——我更喜欢玛丽安·摩尔，我更喜欢威廉·卡洛斯·威廉姆斯，我更喜欢哈特·克莱恩，我更喜欢埃德娜·圣文森特·米莱——我想，“好吧，他们也没有真正参与第一次世界大战。”
Now, Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize in literature, as you know.
现在，如您所知，鲍勃·迪伦获得了诺贝尔文学奖。
Do you consider him a poet?
你认为他是诗人吗？
Yes, I do.
是的，我愿意。
What’s his most poetic song?
他最有诗意的歌曲是什么？
I love “Buckets of Rain.” I don’t know if it’s his most poetic song.
我喜欢《雨桶》。我不知道这是否是他最有诗意的歌曲。
But it’s the one that comes to mind.
但这就是我想到的。
“Buckets of rain / Buckets of tears / Got all them buckets coming out of my ears.”
“一桶桶的雨/一桶桶的眼泪/所有这些桶都从我的耳朵里流出来。”
I have been reading recently in the work of Stephen Sondheim and learning from Sondheim how to think about lyrics and poetry, and I’m not at the end of that period of study.
我最近一直在阅读斯蒂芬·桑德海姆的作品，并向桑德海姆学习如何思考歌词和诗歌，而我还没有结束那段学习。
I’ve felt for a long time that we made a mistake when we decided — and we decided this a hundred years ago or so — that poems were things we read on a page by ourselves silently, rather than poems were things we read around a fire to each other or recited after school in a pageant or sang with music and jesters.
很长一段时间以来，我一直觉得我们犯了一个错误——我们在大约一百年前就决定了——诗歌是我们自己在纸上默默地阅读的东西，而不是诗歌是我们围着火互相朗读的东西，或者是放学后在选美比赛中背诵的东西，或者是伴随着音乐和小丑唱歌的东西。
I’ve felt for a long time that we made a mistake when we decided that poems were things we read on a page by ourselves silently, rather than poems were things we read around a fire to each other or recited after school in a pageant or sang with music and jesters.
很长一段时间以来，我一直觉得我们犯了一个错误，我们认为诗歌是我们自己在纸上默默地阅读的东西，而不是我们围着火互相朗读的东西，或者放学后在选美比赛中背诵的东西，或者与音乐和小丑一起唱歌的东西。
“Walking Down the Street” from my friend Robert Pinsky will point out that for most of the history of poetry, there was music and jesters, too, so that poetic language should be part of the pageantry of a rock concert makes perfect sense to me.
我的朋友罗伯特·平斯基（Robert Pinsky）的《走在街上》会指出，在诗歌的大部分历史中，也有音乐和小丑，因此诗歌语言应该成为摇滚音乐会盛况的一部分，这对我来说是完全合理的。
“Visions of Johanna” would be my Dylan nomination, by the way.
顺便说一下，《约翰娜的幻象》将是我对迪伦的提名。
Sondheim, I think, reached a peak for integrating lyrics and rhythm in a way no earlier American popular composer had done.
我认为，桑德海姆达到了将歌词和节奏融为一体的顶峰，这是早期美国流行作曲家从未做到过的。
He thinks about it so hard.
他想得很辛苦。
It sounds like you’ve studied it more than I have, and you’re ahead of me there.
听起来你比我研究得更多，而且你在这方面比我领先。
On poets as novelists, and vice versa
论诗人作为小说家，反之亦然
People who are novelists and poets.
小说家和诗人的人。
Some — Thomas Hardy was great at both.
有些——托马斯·哈代在这两方面都很出色。
Melville, it seems he fell short as a poet.
梅尔维尔，看来他作为一个诗人还不够。
Edith Wharton .
伊迪丝·沃顿。
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。
He’s a great poet.
他是一位伟大的诗人。
I think Melville’s a great poet.
我认为梅尔维尔是一位伟大的诗人。
You mean “Battle Pieces” or .
你的意思是“战斗碎片”或。
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I mean “Battle Pieces.” “Clarel” is a little bit like “Paradise Lost,” only not.
我的意思是“战斗碎片”。 《克拉雷尔》有点像《失乐园》，但又不同。
More so, yes.
更是如此，是的。
Edith Wharton, probably not a great poet, right?
伊迪丝·华顿，可能不是一个伟大的诗人，对吧？
In one of your articles, you argued Ralph Waldo Emerson, precisely because he was successful as a philosopher, he had a kind of universalism to his thought, and that may have held him back from being great as a poet.
在您的一篇文章中，您认为拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生（Ralph Waldo Emerson）正是因为他作为一名成功的哲学家，他的思想具有一种普遍主义，而这可能阻碍了他成为一名伟大的诗人。
Why don’t we have more people who are both wonderful novelists and wonderful poets?
为什么我们没有更多既是出色的小说家又是出色的诗人的人呢？
I think they really do — and this is a very banal way of saying it — they really do call on different skill sets.
我认为他们确实这么做了——这是一种非常平庸的说法——他们确实需要不同的技能组合。
The sort of distillation and often asocial concentration that it takes to be a lyric poet is quite different from the crowded, cacophonous, socially alert set of faculties one needs to write a great novel.
成为一名抒情诗人所需要的那种精炼和常常与社会无关的专注，与写一部伟大小说所需的拥挤、喧闹、社交警觉的能力截然不同。
I teach both.
我两者都教。
I teach poetry, and I teach the novel and was, in fact, talking yesterday with a graduate student about the differences.
我教诗歌，也教小说，事实上，昨天我正在和一位研究生谈论这些差异。
It doesn’t surprise me at all that people don’t move easily between those.
人们不容易在这些之间移动，我一点也不感到惊讶。
Thomas Hardy, I think, wrote his greatest poetry after his wife had died, and he was in some way delivered into lyric loneliness.
我认为，托马斯·哈代在妻子去世后写下了他最伟大的诗歌，他在某种程度上陷入了抒情的孤独。
I think lyric loneliness is helpful by that event.
我认为抒情的孤独对那件事很有帮助。
Melville is a great poet in “Battle Pieces” because he lets all the deforming and torqueing energies of the war and of his psyche — he lets them fall as they may on the page, so he’s perhaps an example.
梅尔维尔在《战篇》中是一位伟大的诗人，因为他让战争和他的心灵的所有扭曲和扭曲的能量都被释放出来——他让它们像在纸上一样落下，所以他也许是一个例子。
I’m going to be in Chicago tomorrow filming with some first graders who are going to be reading bird poems, haiku in particular, written by Richard Wright.
明天我将在芝加哥与一些一年级学生一起拍摄，他们将阅读理查德·赖特（Richard Wright）写的鸟类诗，特别是俳句。
Now Richard Wright, the writer of “Native Son” and “Black Boy,” is not a person we would expect to have authored a bunch of beautiful poems about sparrows, not a writer we might have expected to find haiku, but he did.
现在，《土生子》和《黑人男孩》的作者理查德·赖特并不是一个我们期望能写出一堆关于麻雀的美丽诗歌的人，也不是一个我们期望能找到俳句的作家，但他做到了。
Do you think we’ll learn anything from applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to poetry?
您认为我们能从将人工智能和机器学习应用于诗歌中学到什么吗？
Or do you view that as a dead end?
或者您认为这是一条死胡同？
I do view it as a dead end.
我确实认为这是一个死胡同。
Certainly we will learn something, but it is our humanity that poetry most meaningfully serves.
当然，我们会学到一些东西，但诗歌最有意义的服务是我们的人性。
It’s our humanity.
这是我们的人性。
It’s our unique intelligence that our language holds.
我们的语言拥有我们独特的智慧。
I hope we will regather to us, that we will cherish more the things about us that are just human.
我希望我们能够重新聚集在一起，更加珍惜我们人类的一切。
As you may know, Emily Dickinson once wrote that she would read backwards the poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, maybe to de-familiarize herself with them in some way.
你可能知道，艾米莉·狄金森曾经写道，她会倒着读伊丽莎白·巴雷特·勃朗宁的诗，也许是为了以某种方式让自己对它们感到陌生。
Should we memorize poems, or does this take away their daring and surprise?
我们应该背诗吗？还是这会剥夺他们的勇气和惊喜？
There are some Bob Dylan songs you don’t want to listen to too many times.
有些鲍勃·迪伦的歌曲你不想听太多次。
Are poems the same?
诗都一样吗？
I think it’s great to memorize poems, but not all poems.
我认为背诗很好，但不是所有的诗。
In the case of Emily Dickinson, there are almost 1,800 poems, and I don’t think I’m ever going to get to read them all attentively, much less memorize them all.
就艾米莉·狄金森而言，有近 1,800 首诗，我认为我不可能专心阅读它们，更不用说记住它们了。
I like memorizing two to four lines of a poem and just walking around with that little fragment.
我喜欢记住一首诗的两到四行，然后带着那个小片段走来走去。
I have talismanic poems like, “Nature’s first green is gold / Her hardest hue to hold.”
我有一些护身符诗，比如“大自然的第一个绿色是金色/她最难掌握的色调。”
That’s just the first two lines of Robert Frost.
这只是罗伯特·弗罗斯特的前两行。
But when the first leaves come out — here it was about 10 days ago — they are gold.
但当第一片叶子长出来时——“那是大约十天前”——它们是金色的。
So I just say that.
所以我就这么说。
I salute the world with those words.
我用这些话向世界致敬。
To have them inside my head and ready for me to extend and salute is a deeply pleasurable thing.
让它们进入我的脑海并准备好让我伸出援手和致敬是一件非常令人愉快的事情。
I like memorizing two to four lines of a poem and just walking around with that little fragment.
我喜欢记住一首诗的两到四行，然后带着那个小片段走来走去。
I have talismanic poems like, “Nature’s first green is gold / Her hardest hue to hold.” That’s just the first two lines of Robert Frost.
我有一些护身符诗，比如“大自然的第一个绿色是金色/她最难掌握的色调。”这只是罗伯特·弗罗斯特的前两行。
But when the first leaves come out — here it was about 10 days ago — they are gold.
但当第一片叶子长出来时——“那是大约十天前”——它们是金色的。
So I just say that.
所以我就这么说。
I salute the world with those words.
我用这些话向世界致敬。
To have them inside my head and ready for me to extend and salute is a deeply pleasurable thing.
让它们进入我的脑海并准备好让我伸出援手和致敬是一件非常令人愉快的事情。
On starting with poetry
从诗开始
Let’s say I’m a programmer.
假设我是一名程序员。
I work in Silicon Valley, and I’ve never really read poetry.
我在硅谷工作，从来没有真正读过诗。
I might’ve even dropped out of college, but I’m very smart.
我什至可能已经从大学退学了，但我很聪明。
How should I start in on learning something about poetry in a way that will perhaps work for me?
我应该如何开始以一种可能对我有用的方式学习诗歌？
What’s your advice?
你有什么建议？
Buy one of those anthologies.
购买其中一本选集。
Buy any poetry anthology, and don’t try to start at the beginning and work your way through.
购买任何诗集，不要试图从头开始并逐步完成。
Just open it up and see if something grabs you.
只要打开它，看看是否有什么东西抓住了你。
If something grabs you, read it once and read it again.
如果有什么东西吸引了你，请读一遍，然后再读一遍。
Another technique I often recommend is, if there’s a poem that you think will interest you, print it, just it, just this one poem.
我经常推荐的另一种技巧是，如果你认为有一首诗会让你感兴趣，就把它打印出来，只是它，只是这首诗。
Print, it’s an old technology, but do it.
打印，这是一项古老的技术，但还是去做吧。
It’s better than reading it on your phone.
这比在手机上阅读更好。
And put it in your pocket.
并将其放入口袋中。
Put it in your back pocket, and pull it out while you’re standing in line somewhere or waiting for a bus.
把它放在后面的口袋里，当你在某个地方排队或等公共汽车时，把它拿出来。
Pull it out and just let your eye bounce around it.
把它拉出来，让你的眼睛在它周围跳来跳去。
I think that letting a poem nudge and nuzzle up against your life and to treat it .
我认为让一首诗轻触你的生活并对待它。
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。
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Whitman recommended this.
惠特曼推荐了这个。
He felt we should treat poems casually.
他觉得我们应该轻松地对待诗歌。
He said, “Loafe with me on the grass.” That was the posture he recommended for reading poetry.
他说：“乐福和我一起在草地上。”这就是他推荐的读诗姿势。
“Loafe with me on the grass.” Relax into this language of another person.
“和我一起在草地上吃面包。”放松地融入另一个人的语言中。
I think that being casual about it .
我觉得随随便便吧。
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and you can always watch a pretty good TV show on public television if you want some inspiration.
如果您想要一些灵感，您可以随时在公共电视上观看精彩的电视节目。
Poetry in America, yes, which you can buy on Amazon, by the way.
顺便说一句，《美国诗歌》是的，你可以在亚马逊上购买。
Let’s say you’re a parent.
假设您是一名家长。
You love poetry.
你热爱诗歌。
You have children.
你有孩子。
They don’t know much poetry yet.
他们还不太懂诗。
You understand coercion is often counterproductive.
你知道强制往往会适得其反。
How do you seduce them into poetry?
你如何引诱他们进入诗歌？
You just read to them when they’re little.
当他们还小的时候，你就读给他们听。
Just don’t stop.
只是不要停下来。
You just read to them until they tell you to stop.
你只要读给他们听，直到他们告诉你停止。
You read through.
你读完。
With two of my children, I got all the way through Little Women.
我和我的两个孩子一起读完了《小妇人》。
I read all of Little Women to a fifth or sixth grader, who could certainly read herself.
我把《小妇人》全部读给五年级或六年级的学生听，他们当然也能读懂自己。
She could have read Little Women, but that I was reading it to her, chapter after chapter, and reading her Emily Dickinson.
她本可以读《小妇人》，但我一章又一章地读给她听，还读她的艾米莉·狄金森。
Sometimes if we see one of those leaves, I might say, “Nature’s first green is gold / Her hardest hue to hold.”
有时，如果我们看到其中一片叶子，我可能会说，“大自然的第一个绿色是金色/她最难掌握的色调。”
I think children, whether they acknowledge it or not, when they’re young, they really do pay attention to what we do and what we care about.
我认为孩子们，无论他们承认与否，当他们年轻的时候，他们确实会关注我们所做的事情和我们关心的事情。
If we read, they read.
如果我们阅读，他们就会阅读。
If we read to them, they’ll read to their children.
如果我们读书给他们听，他们也会读书给他们的孩子听。
Kids love poetry.
孩子们喜欢诗歌。
They love poetry they can’t understand.
他们喜欢他们无法理解的诗歌。
They don’t only like rhyming poetry, although they like that.
尽管他们喜欢押韵诗，但他们不仅喜欢押韵诗。
They like the puzzle in it.
他们喜欢里面的谜题。
Here’s two lines of Dickinson’s I love.
这是我喜欢的狄金森的两行诗。
“We like March, his shoes are purple.” “We like March, his shoes are purple.”
“我们喜欢马奇，他的鞋子是紫色的。” “我们喜欢马奇，他的鞋子是紫色的。”
What does that mean?
这意味着什么？
“His shoes are purple.” I guess it refers to the first crocuses or to the soaking of the ground.
“他的鞋子是紫色的。”我猜它指的是第一批番红花或地面的浸泡。
You ask a second grader, “Why are March’s shoes purple?” and they like to talk about it.
你问二年级学生：“为什么马奇的鞋子是紫色的？”他们喜欢谈论它。
Do you have a Shaquille O’Neal story or impression that you’re able to share with us?
您有沙奎尔·奥尼尔的故事或印象可以与我们分享吗？
NEWWhat a hoot it was, reading poetry with Shaquille O’Neal.
新和沙奎尔·奥尼尔一起读诗真是太棒了。
I think the funniest thing for me was that they had to put me on this chair.
我认为对我来说最有趣的是他们不得不把我放在这把椅子上。
They had to take this stool, I guess they’re accustomed to doing this, so that I didn’t look like a teeny, weeny, weeny, little person.
他们必须拿这个凳子，我想他们已经习惯这样做了，这样我就不会看起来像一个很小的人。
He was sitting in a normal chair.
他坐在一张普通的椅子上。
My feet when I interviewed him were hanging way, way above the ground.
当我采访他时，我的脚悬在离地面很远的地方。
He was splayed on the ground.
他被打倒在地。
He’s immensely thoughtful.
他非常体贴。
He’s quick-witted but deep.
他机智但深刻。
He was really ready to read a poem with me.
他真的准备好和我一起读一首诗了。
He was all over it.
他全神贯注。
He was all over it, and I loved his gusto.
他全神贯注，我喜欢他的热情。
We were reading a poem that rewarded quick wits, but actually also rewarded the capacity to pause and say, “Hmm.”
我们正在读一首诗，它奖励我们的机智，但实际上也奖励我们停下来说“嗯”的能力。
In the course of our conversation, he realized this was one of those poems where he was going to have to say, “Hmm.” I love that he slowed down.
在我们谈话的过程中，他意识到这是一首他不得不说“嗯”的诗。我喜欢他放慢脚步。
I’ll close with two questions very directly about you.
我将以两个非常直接的关于你的问题作为结束。
To invoke the economist’s concept of comparative advantage — and please be immodest — how would you describe or characterize what you bring to poetry that maybe other people don’t quite as well?
引用经济学家的比较优势概念——“请不要谦虚”——你会如何描述或描述你给诗歌带来的东西，而其他人可能不太清楚？
I think I bring a belief in the capacity of any person sitting across from me to have a blast reading a poem.
我想我相信坐在我对面的任何人都有能力愉快地阅读一首诗。
I really believe that human language — even encoded in some of the arcane ways, poems, and code — language is fascinating to other human beings.
我真的相信人类语言——甚至以一些神秘的方式、诗歌和密码进行编码——语言对其他人类来说是令人着迷的。
Somehow, I persuade others to believe with me that they can have a blast reading a poem, and that the development of understanding that can occur as you read 15 lines or 20 lines is just about as much fun as you can have, and a cerebral kind of fun, the sort of fun that some people look to in the Sunday crossword puzzle or the Wednesday cross.
不知何故，我说服其他人跟我一样相信他们读一首诗会很开心，而且当你读 15 行或 20 行诗时，理解的发展几乎是你所能获得的最大乐趣，而且是一种大脑的乐趣，就像有些人在周日填字游戏或周三交叉游戏中寻求的那种乐趣。
It’s that kind of fun, and I think that visiting with me, if you’ve never tasted that kind of fun, it might be worth trying.
就是这么有趣，我想和我一起参观，如果你从未尝过那种乐趣，也许值得一试。
Last question.
最后一个问题。
You meet an 18-year-old, and this person wants in some way to be a future version of you, Elisa New, and asks you for advice.
你遇到一个 18 岁的女孩，这个人想以某种方式成为未来版本的你，Elisa New，并向你寻求建议。
What advice do you give them?
您给他们什么建议？
Teach.
教。
Teach.
教。
Yes, teach the young, and yes, that’s the advice.
是的，教导年轻人，是的，这就是建议。
Because what teaching is, is learning to converse with others.
因为教学就是学习与他人交谈。
It’s to experience a topic as it grows richer and richer under the attentions of a community.
这是体验一个主题，因为它在社区的关注下变得越来越丰富。
That’s what a classroom that really works is.
这才是真正有效的课堂。
It’s a community that’s ever rewarding.
这是一个永远有益的社区。
Great final answer.
很棒的最终答案。
Thank you, Elisa New, and again, for our listeners, her PBS show is Poetry in America.
谢谢你，Elisa New，再次感谢我们的听众，她的 PBS 节目是《美国诗歌》。
On TV of course, but also available for purchase on iTunes, Amazon, and other places.
当然可以在电视上观看，但也可以在 iTunes、亚马逊和其他地方购买。
Thank you for the conversation.
谢谢你的谈话。
Thank you so much, Tyler.
非常感谢你，泰勒。