The Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks has been praised for deepening the significance of personal and social experiences so that these experiences become universal in their implication. She has also been praised for her "sense of form, which is basic and remarkable." Many of her poems are concerned with a Black community named Bronzeville, on the south side of Chicago. Her literary skill makes Bronzeville more than just a place on a map. This community, like all important literary places (Robinson's Tibury Town and Masters' Spoon River, for example), becomes a testing ground of personality, a place where the raw material of experience is shaped by imagination and where the joys and trials of being human are both sung and judged. The qualities for which Brooks's poetry is led are (as one critic has pointed out) "boldness, invention, a daring to experiment, and a naturalness that does not scorn literature but absorbs it."
Her love for poetry began early. At the age of seven. she "began to put rhymes together," and when she was thirteen, one of her poems was published in a children's magazine. During her teens she contributed more than seventy-five poems to a Chicago newspaper. In 1941 she began to attend a class in writing poetry at the South Side Community Art Center, and several years later, her poems began to appear in Poetry and other magazines. He first collection of poems, A Street in Bronzeville, was published in 1945. Four years later, Annie Allen, her second collection of poems, appeared. In 1950 Annie Allen was awarded a Pulitzer prize for poetry. A novel, Maud Martha, about a young black girl growing up in Chicago, published in 1953, was praised for its warmth and insights. In 1963 her selected Poems appeared.
1. The main subject of the passage is Gwendolyn Brooks's _____.
[A] personal background
[B] hometown
[C] literary achievements
[D] childhood
2. Why does the author mention Tibury Town and Spoon River?
[A] To give credit to tow great writers.
[B] To provide examples of important literary places.
[C] To suggest similarities between Brooks's style and that of other writers.
[D] To encourage the reader to read Robinson and Masters.
3. The author uses quotations in the first paragraph primarily to _____.
[A] help emphasize the significance of Brooks's poetry
[B] introduce biographical information about Brooks
[C] present opposing points of view about Brooks's work
[D] state little-known facts about Brooks's novel
4. According to the passage, Brooks's poetry was first published when she was _____.
[A] seven years old
[B] attending a class in writing
[C] in her teens
[D] an established novelist
5. Her novel was praised because _____.
[A] she wrote something about the Black people
[B] she had a good personality
[C] her works were shaped by imagination
[D] she had promoted social and personal experiences
参考答案：C B A C D
The agricultural revolution in the nineteenth century involved two things the invention of labor-saving machinery and the development of scientific agriculture. labor-saving machinery naturally appeared first where labor was scarce. "In Europe", said Thomas Jefferson, "the object is to make the most of their land, labor being abundant; here it is to make the most of our labor, lard being abundant". It was in America, there fore, that the great advances in nineteenth-century agricultural machinery first Came. At the opening of the century, with the exception of a crude plow, farmers could have carried practically all of the existing agricultural implements on their backs: by 1860, most of the machinery in use today had been designed in an early form. The most important of the early inventions was the iron plow. As early as 1990 Charles Newbold of New Jersey had been working on the idea of a cast-iron plow and spent his entire fortune in introducing his invention. The farmers, however, would home none of it, claiming that the iron poisoned the soil and made the weeds grow. Nevertheless many people devoted their attention to the plow, until in 1869, James Oliver of South Bend, Indiana, turned out the first chilled-steel plow.
1. The word "here" (para 1,line 4) refers to _____.
[A] Europe
[B] America
[C] New Jersey
[D] Indiana
2. Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE?
[A] The reed for labor helped the invention of machinery in America.
[B] The farmer rejected Charles Newbold's plow for fear of ruin of their field.
[C] Both Euorpe and America had great need of farm machinery.
[D] It was in Indiana that the first chilled-steel plow was produced.
3. The passage is mainly about _____.
[A] the agricultural revolution
[B] the invention of labor-saving machinery
[C] the development of scientific agriculture
[D] the farming machinery in America
4. At the opening of the nineteenth-century,farmers in America _____.
[A] preferred light tools
[B] were extremely self-reliant
[C] had many portable tools
[D] had very few tools
5. Implied but not stated _____.
[A] There was a shortage of workers on American farms.
[B] The most important of the early inventions was the iron plow.
[C] After 1869,many people devoted their attention to the plow.
[D] Charles Newbolt had made a furtune by his cast-iron plow
参考答案：B C B D A
