有哪些美國詩人及其詩歌值得推薦？推薦理由是什麼？

12-22

我自己沒有做過流派方面的系統瞭解，都是胡亂讀的。鑑於每個詩人都可以寫篇論文來介紹，我只稍作列舉和推薦。（發現這個問題原來是我提的……）

Ralph Waldo Emerson，美國文壇著名作家和詩人，啓發和影響了很多後代的詩人。

Edgar Allen Poe，美國十九世紀最重要的作家之一。小說、批評文字、詩歌都有非常高的造詣。雖然詩歌的數量非常有限，但是很多都是很有名氣，最有名的作品之一是《The Raven》（譯作《烏鴉》）。

Walt Whitman，以《Leaves of Grass》（《草葉集》）聞名。這本詩集的出版了很多次，每次作者本人都加以修改和增刪，堪稱美國文學史上的劃時代鉅著。中文譯本多是選譯，淘寶上有不多的全譯本。

Emily Dickinson，最偉大的女詩人之一，也是死後成名。詩歌多簡潔短小，我個人很感興趣的內容是她描寫的死後情景的詩歌，大概三百多篇。

Ezra Pound，意象主義運動的倡導者，現代主義詩歌中的大師級人物。單從幫 T.S.Elliot 修改《The Waste Land》，資助 D.H.Lawrence ，幫助 James Joyce 出版《Ulysses》這幾件事來說，就不能忽略他對整個美國文壇的影響。

Carl Sandburg，在三四十年代被成為沒有頭銜的桂冠詩人，被約翰遜總統授予總統自由勳章，並且稱他為「民主的歌手」。

Robert Frost，工業時代的田園詩人。「他是一個傑出的人，腳踏實地，平凡的血液中有閃光的東西流動，其中含有特殊的成分。」雖然差不多四十歲才成名，但是他的詩歌廣受歡迎，並且相對於其他同時代的詩人很少受到批評與指責。詩歌探討自然與人的關係，既有形式也有內容。@Brian 在答案中給出的兩篇是他最有名的詩歌，尤其是 The Road Not Taken。

Thomas Stearns Eliot，即大家熟悉的 T.S.Eliot，英美現代主義運動的創始人。通過神話展開的作品《荒原》影響了非常多的詩人，也被很多批評家、評論家、讀者拿來反復揣摩和評價。另外一個代表作《The Hollow Men》（中文譯作《空心人》）也是被許多中國讀者熟悉的作品之一。

Wallace Stevens，詩歌充滿了幻想。去世後名氣大增，甚至與龐德等人齊名。

Elizabeth Bishop，寫自己生活經驗的詩人，但並非強調個人化。是形式主義詩人，但是又進行許多的試驗。代表作是《Fish》和《At the Fishhouse》。

Edwin Arlington Robinson，十九世紀和二十世紀的過渡詩人，詩歌具有悲劇氣質，代表作《Tristram》。

Sidney Lanier，熱愛音樂的美國南方詩人。

Langston Hughes，二十詩集美國最著名的黑人詩人。詩歌簡潔樸素，甚至帶有 Blues 和 Jazz 的韻律。因為抒寫了很多當時美國社會存在的鬥爭以及黑人的生活，被尊崇為「美國黑人最傑出的歌手」，代表作是《Montage of a Dream Deferred》。

（不知道怎麼概括了。好懶，趴了。暫時不寫了，有時間了再補充吧。）

推薦幾個對上述一些詩人有重大影響作用的歐洲詩人：
S.T.Coleridge，Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Charles Pierre Baudelaire，http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake
William Blake，http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake

Sestina

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It"s time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle"s small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

by Elizabeth Bishop

(A sestina is a fixed verse consisting of six stanza of six lines each, normally followed by a three-line envoi. The words that end each line of the first stanza are used as line endings in each of the following stanzas, rotated in a set pattern.)

- - - - -

One Art

The art of losing isn』t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn』t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother』s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn』t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn』t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan』t have lied. It』s evident
the art of losing』s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

by Elizabeth Bishop

(A villanelleis a nineteen-line fixed verse form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines.)

- - - - -

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound』s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

by Robert Frost

- - - - -

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

by Robert Frost

埃茲拉·龐德《在地鐵的出口處》（In a Station of the Metro）
艾米麗·迪金森《多遠至天堂?》
沃爾特·惠特曼《草葉集》
艾略特《荒原》
威廉·卡洛斯·威廉姆斯《春景》（Spring and All）
艾倫·金斯伯格《嚎叫》

美國詩人眾多，我選的是分布在不同時代的幾位詩人，其中的幾首詩不僅是該詩人的代表作，也是詩人對人類生活狀況的深刻反思，尤其是《草葉集》、《荒原》、《嚎叫》，更是代表了一個時代。

隨便亂讀的
最喜歡T.S. Eliot 和 E.E. Cummings
Eliot這首詩把一個中年男人的蒼涼和無奈刻畫得血淋淋的每次讀我都腦補美國麗人然後就被迷得七葷八素
The Love Song of J. Alfred PrufrockS』io credesse che mia risposta fosseA persona che mai tornasse al mondo,Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondoNon torno vivo alcun, s』i』odo il vero,Senza tema d』infamia ti rispondo. LET us go then, you and I,When the evening is spread out against the skyLike a patient etherized upon a table;Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,The muttering retreats 5Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotelsAnd sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:Streets that follow like a tedious argumentOf insidious intentTo lead you to an overwhelming question…. 10Oh, do not ask, 「What is it?」Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and goTalking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panesLicked its tongue into the corners of the evening,Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20And seeing that it was a soft October night,Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be timeFor the yellow smoke that slides along the street,Rubbing its back upon the window panes; 25There will be time, there will be timeTo prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;There will be time to murder and create,And time for all the works and days of handsThat lift and drop a question on your plate; 30Time for you and time for me,And time yet for a hundred indecisions,And for a hundred visions and revisions,Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go 35Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be timeTo wonder, 「Do I dare?」 and, 「Do I dare?」Time to turn back and descend the stair,With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40(They will say: 「How his hair is growing thin!」)My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—(They will say: 「But how his arms and legs are thin!」)Do I dare 45Disturb the universe?In a minute there is timeFor decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all:Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;I know the voices dying with a dying fallBeneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,Then how should I beginTo spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60 And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all—Arms that are braceleted and white and bare(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)Is it perfume from a dress 65That makes me so digress?Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin?
. . . . . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70And watched the smoke that rises from the pipesOf lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?… I should have been a pair of ragged clawsScuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75Smoothed by long fingers,Asleep … tired … or it malingers,Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,I am no prophet—and here』s no great matter;I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85And in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all,After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,Would it have been worth while, 90To have bitten off the matter with a smile,To have squeezed the universe into a ballTo roll it toward some overwhelming question,To say: 「I am Lazarus, come from the dead,Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all」— 95If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say: 「That is not what I meant at all; That is not it, at all.」 And would it have been worth it, after all,Would it have been worth while, 100After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—And this, and so much more?—It is impossible to say just what I mean!But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105Would it have been worth whileIf one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,And turning toward the window, should say: 「That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.」
. . . . . . . .
110No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;Am an attendant lord, one that will doTo swell a progress, start a scene or two,Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,Deferential, glad to be of use, 115Politic, cautious, and meticulous;Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old … I grow old … 120I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. 125 I have seen them riding seaward on the wavesCombing the white hair of the waves blown backWhen the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the seaBy sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

E.E. Cummings 的詩嗯很是（讀）獨（不）特（懂）因為太多allusion以及他自己又喜歡造字但是他的結構之新奇在我看來很有趣他的詩已經超越了文學作品通過evocative language或者imageries來讓讀者去想像的階段，而是通過調整結構來直觀appeal to visual aesthetic pleasure.
比如說：
l(a ---(對的這是詩的名字好吧他的詩基本都沒有名字

one

iness

而這首就是他改變詞意的典型之一比如anyone，how, no one, didn"t, did的活用都讓人眼前一亮。而通過顛倒春夏秋冬日月星雨的順序也創造出一種世事無常的感覺

anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter he sang his didn』t he danced his did


Women and men(both little and small)

cared for anyone not at all

they sowed their isn』t they reaped their same

sun moon stars rain
children guessed(but only a few

and down they forgot as up they grew

autumn winter spring summer)

that noone loved him more by more
when by now and tree by leaf

she laughed his joy she cried his grief

bird by snow and stir by still

anyone』s any was all to her
someones married their everyones

laughed their cryings and did their dance

(sleep wake hope and then)they

said their nevers they slept their dream
stars rain sun moon

(and only the snow can begin to explain

how children are apt to forget to remember

with up so floating many bells down)
one day anyone died i guess

(and noone stooped to kiss his face)

busy folk buried them side by side

little by little and was by was
all by all and deep by deep

and more by more they dream their sleep

noone and anyone earth by april

wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding) summer autumn winter spring reaped their sowing and went their came sun moon stars rain

龐德

《在一個地鐵站》龐德

在人群中這些面孔幽靈般顯現，
濕漉漉的黑色枝條上的許多花瓣。

《在一個地鐵站》這首詩很短，只有兩行，卻膾炙人口，耐人尋味，原因在於它給讀者提供了廣闊的想像空間。

首先從內容上看，主要是寫詩人在陰暗、潮濕的地鐵站台看到一張張花瓣似的面孔及當時詩人的驚喜之情。這一結論從何而來？主要是通過對詩歌意象的合理想像。這首詩上、下兩組形象相對應——即「幽靈般的面孔」和「黑枝上的花瓣」。「面孔」是本體，「花瓣」是喻體。這兩組意象在我們眼前拼湊出了這樣一幅畫面——天是陰沉的，或許剛下過雨，潮濕的空氣中瀰漫著物質頹廢的氣味。在城市的某個陰暗的、「濕漉漉」的地鐵站里，人潮湧動，人群像沉默無言的魚，彼此清醒而機械地遊動。四周時常有狡猾而戒備的神情，還有一張張不容易看出痛苦的臉。詩人站在這裡「黑色枝條」般的地鐵站里，情緒低落，身心疲憊。突然，詩人眼前一亮——一張張天真無邪的兒童面孔出現在詩人面前，他們手牽著手，用充滿稚氣的童聲唱著兒歌……多麼真實可愛，生機勃勃的畫面，讓詩人頓覺美感，這些如「花瓣」般美好的面孔出現得太突然了，如同幽靈般神秘、飄忽，給詩人意外的驚喜，詩人的心境也因之豁然開朗，這些面孔彷彿溫暖的陽光灑進了陰冷的地鐵，融化了詩人冰封已久的心靈……

朗費羅，(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow，1807-1882),出生於緬因州波特蘭城一個律師家庭19世紀美國最偉大的浪漫主義詩人之一,牛律大學和劍橋大學曾分別授予他榮譽博士學位。倫敦威斯敏斯特教堂詩人之角安放了他的胸像，他是獲得這種尊榮的第一位美國詩人。他一生創作的大量抒情詩、敘事詩、歌謠和詩劇曾在美國和歐洲廣泛流傳，受到讚賞。朗費羅於1807年2月27日出生於緬因州波特蘭城一個律師家庭。1822年進入博多因學院，畢業後去過法國、西班牙、義大利和德國等地，研究這些國家的語言和文學。1836年開始在哈佛大學講授語言，文學長達十八年，致力於介紹歐洲文化和浪漫主義作家的作品，成為新英格蘭文化中心劍橋文學界和社交界的重要人物。

箭和歌 THE ARROW AND THE SONG

我向空中射出一隻箭　I shot an arrow into the air,
　　它落到地上 It fell to earth,
　　不知在何方 I knew not where;
　　因為它飛得那麼迅疾 For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
　　眼力跟不上它的飛翔 Could not follow it in its flight.
　　我向空中唱出一支歌 I breathed a song into the air,
　　它落到地上 It fell to earth,
　　不知在何方 I knew not where;
　　因為誰的眼力會那麼尖那麼強 For who has sight so keen and strong,
　　可以跟得上歌聲的飛揚 That it can follow the flight of song?
　　很久很久以後　Long, long afterward, in an oak
　　我在一棵橡樹上找到了那支箭　I found the arrow,
　　沒有折斷 still unbroke;
　　而那首歌 And the song,
　　從頭到尾　from beginning to end,
　　我也發現藏在一個朋友的心間　I found again in the heart of a friend

伊麗莎白畢曉普Bishop

Letter to N.Y.

for Louise crane

In your next letter I wish you"d say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays and after the plays
what other pleasures you"re pursuing:

taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road gose round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,

and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you"re in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,

and most of the jokes you just can"t catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so teribly late,

and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.

--Wheat, not oats, dear. I"m afraid
if it"s wheat it"s none of your sowing,
nevertheless I"d like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.