The First Book/第一本书
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- The First Book*/第一本书
| Open it. Go ahead, it won’t bite. Well . . . maybe a little. More a nip, like. A tingle. It’s pleasurable, really. You see, it keeps on opening. You may fall in. Sure, it’s hard to get started: remember learning to use knife and fork? Dig in: you’ll never reach bottom. It’s not like it’s the end of the world just the world as you think you know it. | 打开吧。 读读看，它不咬的。 哦......也许有点咬。 更象夹一下。有丁点儿痛。 怪好玩的，真的。 你瞧，书在翻动呢。 你会掉进去的。 当然啦，开头总有些难； 还记得学着 用刀叉吗？挖进去吧： 你不会挖到底的。 这不会象世界末日到了似的—— 这是个你觉得你懂的 世界。 |
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Rita Dove, U. S. Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995, is Commonwealth Professor of English of the University of Virginia (Charlottesville). She is author of nine collections of poems, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Thomas and Beulah and the forthcoming Sonata Mulattica—A Life in Five Movements and a Short Play (W. W. Norton, April 2009). She is also author of two volumes of fiction—Fifth Sunday, short stories, published in the Callaloo Fiction Series; and Through the Ivory Gate, a novel—and widely produced play, The Darker Side of the Earth. Her song cycle Seven for Luck, with music by John Williams, debuted at Tanglewood in 1998. Her many literary and academic honors also include the 2006 Common Wealth Award for Distinguished Service, the 1996 Heinz Award, the 1996 National Humanities Medal, and the 1993 NAACP Great American Artist Award.
Footnote
* Reprinted from On the Bus With Rosa Parks: Poems by Rita Dove. With Permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
