Poetry doesn't matter to most people. One has to wonder if poetry has any place in the 2lst century, when music videos and satellite television offer daunting competition for poems, which demand a good deal of attention and considerate analytic skills, as well as some knowledge of the traditions of poetry.(1)____

In the 19th century poets like Scott Byron, and Longfellow had huge audiences around the world. Their works were best sellers, yet they were cultural heroes as well. (2)____But readers had few choices in those days. One imagines, perhaps false, that people actually  liked  poetry.(3)____ It  provided  them  with  narratives  that entertained and inspired. (4)____They gave them words to attach to their feelings. They enjoyed folk ballads, too. (5)____  In the sense, music and poetry joined hands.

In the 20th century, something went to amiss.(6)____ Poetry became "difficult". That is, poets began to reflect the complex of modem culture, its fierce disjunctions.(7)____ The poems of Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle and T.S. Eliot asked a lot of the reader, including a range of cultural references to topics when even m the early 1900s had become little know.(8)____ To read Pound and Eliot with easy, for Instance, one needed some knowledge of Greek and Latin poetry.(9)____ That kind of learning had been fairly common among educated readers in the past. The same could be said for most readers in the 20th century-or today, when education has become more democratized and the study of the classics has been relegated to a small number of enthusiasts.(10)____
文章大意
本文讨论的是19世纪到20世纪诗歌的普及度。19世纪，诗歌受到大众的喜爱，为人们带来快乐、催人奋进，表达了人们的内心感受。而20世纪以后，诗歌开始变得难懂，诗歌对读者要求很高。到了今天，教育已经越来越民主化，对于经典的学习已经降级到少数热心人士，人们不由地担心诗歌在21世纪是否还能存活。
>>点击查看答案及解析