题型：阅读理解 题类：模拟题 难易度：普通
广东省中山一中等七校联合体2019届高三英语冲刺模拟试卷
In the nineteenth century, one of America's greatest writers, Walt Whitman, helped people learn to value poetry. Whitman created a new kind of poetry.
Walt Whitman was born in eighteen nineteen in New York City. During his long life, he watched America grow from a young nation to the strongest industrial power in the world. As a young man, Whitman worked as a school teacher, a printer and a newspaper reporter. He was thirty-six years old when he published his first book of poetry in eighteen fifty-five. He called it Leaves of Grass. It had only twelve poems. The poems are written in free verse. The lines do not follow any set form. Some lines are short. Some are long. The words at the end of each line do not have a similar sound. They do not rhyme.
One of America's greatest thinkers and writers immediately recognized the importance of Leaves of Grass. Ralph Waldo Emerson praised Whitman's work. But most other poets and writers said nothing and even denounced it. Most readers also rejected Whitman's poems. The new form of his poetry surprised many people. Even his own brother told Whitman that he should stop writing poetry. But Whitman had many things to say. And he continued to say them. Readers began to understand that America had a great new poetic voice.
Walt Whitman's poems praise the United States and its democracy. The poet expressed his love for America and its people in many ways. Experts today praise Leaves of Grass as a major literary work. In eighteen seventy-three, Walt Whitman suffered a stroke. He spent the last years of his life in Camden, New Jersey. Whitman was poor and weak during the last years of his life. He died in eighteen ninety-two. Some critics say Walt Whitman was a spokesman for democracy. Others say he was not a spokesman for anything. Instead, they simply call him a great poet.
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