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HOST:
Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC — VOA’s radio magazine in SpecialEnglish.
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This is Doug Johnson. On our program today,
We play music from the movie “Chicago” …
Answer a listener’s question about how American states were named…
And report about a month-long celebration of poetry.
National Poetry Month
HOST:
April is National Poetry Month in the United States. The AmericanAcademy of Poets started the yearly observance innineteen-ninety-six. People across the country organize and takepart in many kinds of poetry activities. They include poets,booksellers, reading groups, teachers and librarians. Steve Emberhas more.
ANNCR:
One goal of National Poetry Month is to show the importance ofpoetry in American culture. Other goals are to influence moreAmericans to read poetry, to increase the importance of teachingpoetry in the schools and to increase support for poets and theirwork.
Throughout the month, thousands of bookstores, libraries andschools hold readings, workshops and other activities. One of theseis the National Poetry Month Reading Series in New York City. Onseven nights this month, groups will gather to hear and discuss thework of several poets. One of these poets is Charles Simic(SEE-mitch).
Charles Simic was born in Yugoslavia in nineteen-thirty-eight. Hecame to the United States as a teenager. He and his family lived inChicago, Illinois. His first poems were published innineteen-fifty-nine, when he was twenty-one years old. Now he is aprofessor of English at the University of New Hampshire in thenortheastern United States.
Charles Simic has published more than sixty books of poetry inthe United States and around the world. He has also published manytranslations of French, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian and Slovenianpoetry. He has won many awards for his work, including the PulitzerPrize for Poetry. And he has been honored by the MacArthurFoundation, the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment forthe Arts.
Here is an example of Charles Simic’s work, a short poem called”Watermelons,” read by Barbara Klein.
POETRY READER:
Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.
(From “Return to a Place Lit By a Glassof Milk,” by Charles Simic, copyright 1974. Published by GeorgeBraziller. Used with permission.)
ANNCR:
National Poetry Month will continue during April. You can learnabout a famous American poet, Emily Dickinson, on the SpecialEnglish program “People in America” on Sunday.
State Names
HOST:
Our VOA listener question this week comes from Vietnam. BinhTranh Nguyen asks how the fifty American states got their names.
Each state was named in a different way. For example, the firstBritish colonies were usually named for British rulers. Thesoutheastern states of North Carolina and South Carolina used to beone area called Carolina. Explorers named it Carolina insixteen-twenty-nine to honor King Charles of England. Carolina isthe female form of Charles in the Latin language.
By the early seventeen-hundreds, Carolina was so large that itseparated into two parts — north and south. The two areas becamestates about fifty years later, when the colonies won theirindependence from Britain in the American Revolution. NorthCarolina, South Carolina and many other colonies kept their nameswhen they became states.
The early British colonists named some areas by adding the word”new” to the name of a town or place in Britain. For example, thatis how the eastern states of New Hampshire and New Jersey got theirnames.
Other states were named by Europeans who were not British. Forexample, Spanish explorers in the sixteenth century gave the nameCalifornia to an area they discovered. They did this because theythought the area was an island. California was the name of an islandof gold in a well-known Spanish book of the time.
Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon discovered what is now thesouthern state of Florida on the Christian holiday, Easter. Hecalled the new land “La Florida” to honor the Spanish Feast ofFlowers at Easter.
Other names of places show the influence of American Indians. Forexample, French explorers called a river in the Middle West the”Missouri”. They named it for the Indian tribe that lived along theriver. They also gave the name Missouri to a territory along theriver, which later became a state.
French explorers did the same thing in other places too. AnIndian tribe called the Kansa lived in one area. The French added an”s” and gave the name to a river and later to the area where thetribe lived. Today, it is the state of Kansas. Every one ofAmerica’s fifty states has its own story. But we have no more timeto tell about them now.
“Chicago”
HOST:
Last month, the movie “Chicago”won the Academy Award for best motion picture. It is about two womenperformers in Chicago, Illinois during the nineteen-twenties. Bothwomen murdered their lovers. But they are found innocent in court.The movie is based on a true story. Shep O’Neal explains.
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The real women were Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner. Newspaperreporter Maurine Watkins wrote about their murder trials in Chicagoin the nineteen-twenties.
Later, she wrote a play about the women and changed their namesto Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly. In the movie “Chicago,” the two womenare arrested for murder. They are jailed with other women who alsokilled their husbands or boyfriends. They all sing about this in”The Cell Block Tango.”
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Roxie and Velma have the same lawyer, Billy Flynn. He uses themedia to get public sympathy for the women and to influence thecourt. This is the main reason the women are found innocent. RichardGere plays Billy Flynn in the movie. He explains his methods in thissong, “Razzle Dazzle”.
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The musical “Chicago” is the third movie based on MaurineWatkins’ story. But it is really a version of the musical play firstproduced on Broadway in New York in the nineteen-seventies. We leaveyou now with one of the most popular songs from “Chicago.” CatherineZeta-Jones, as Velma Kelly, sings “All That Jazz.”
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HOST:
This is Doug Johnson. I hope you enjoyed our program today. Joinus again next week for AMERICAN MOSAIC — VOA’s radio magazine inSpecial English.
This AMERICAN MOSAIC program was written by Nancy Steinbach. Andour producer was Paul Thompson.