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Famous Absurdity Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Absurdity poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous absurdity poems. These examples illustrate what a famous absurdity poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Ferlinghetti, Lawrence
...Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it ma...Read more of this...



by Levy, Amy
...I cannot think it true,
My friend, that there is no more you.
Almost as soon were no more I,
Which were, of course, absurdity!
Your place is bare, you are not seen,
Your grave, I'm told, is growing green;
And both for you and me, you know,
There's no Above and no Below.
That you are dead must be inferred,
And yet my thought rejects the word....Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ntent, you say. We call, but you remain. 
Nothing alive gone wrong could be so plain, 
Or quite so blasted with absurdity. 

You click away the kingdom that is yours, 
And you click off your crown for cap and bells;
You smile, who are still master of the feast, 
And for your smile we credit you the least; 
But when your false, unhallowed laugh occurs, 
We seem to think there may be something else....Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...are 
 For government of darkness and of death, 
 Of grave and worms.' Brother, this woman hath 
 As marchioness with absurdity set forth 
 To rule o'er frontier bulwarks of the north. 
 In any case to us a danger she, 
 And having stupidly insulted me 
 'Tis needful that she die. To blurt all out— 
 I know that you desire her; without doubt 
 The flame that rages in my heart warms yours; 
 To carry out these subtle plans of ours, 
 We have become as gypsies near th...Read more of this...

by Watts, Isaac
...Absurdity of infidelity.

1 Cor. 1:26-31. 

Shall atheists dare insult the cross
Of our Redeemer, God?
Shall infidels reproach his laws,
Or trample on his blood?

What if he choose mysterious ways
To cleanse us from our faults?
May not the works of sovereign grace
Transcend our feeble thoughts?

What if his gospel bids us fight
With flesh, and se...Read more of this...



by Tebb, Barry
...douceur de vivre’-

I experienced for the first time all the joy of living.

I quote of their plenitude to mock the absurdity

Of English poets who have no time for Francophiles

Better the ‘O altitudo’ of earlier generations –

Wallace Stevens’ "French and English

Are one language indivisible."

That scent of sawdust, the milkcart the pony pulled

Each morning over the cobbles, the earthenware jug

I carried to be filled, ladle by shining ladle,

From the great chur...Read more of this...

by Khayyam, Omar
...him who possesses intelligence to proclaim this important
point: that in the eyes of a philosopher it is an
absolute absurdity to make divine fore-knowledge in league
with sin.
308...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...a circle on the grass; therein
I turn the pages of my holy book.

II. Ribh denounces Patrick

An abstract Greek absurdity has crazed the man -
Recall that masculine Trinity. Man, woman, child 
 (daughter or son),
That's how all natural or supernatural stories run.

Natural and supernatural with the self-same ring are wed.
As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets 
 Godhead,
For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said.Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware th...Read more of this...

by Baudelaire, Charles
...And like a drunkard who sees all things twice, 
With feverish troubled spirit, chilly and sick, 
Wounded by mystery and absurdity! 

In vain my reason tried to cross the bar, 
The whirling storm but drove her back again; 
And my soul tossed, and tossed, an outworn wreck, 
Mastless, upon a monstrous, shoreless sea....Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...I

What shall I do with this absurdity -
O heart, O troubled heart - this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog's tail?
 Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
Imagination, nor an ear and eye
That more expected the impossible -
No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly,
Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben's back
And had the livelong summer day to ...Read more of this...

by Brecht, Bertolt
...Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.

Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach of his friends
In trouble?

It is true: I earn my living
But, belie...Read more of this...

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