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Famous Abuses Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Plath, Sylvia
...thout the frame of fables,
Saint and king unfisted obstruction's knuckles
By no miracle or majestic means,

But by such abuses
As smack of spite and the overscrupulous
Twisting of thumbscrews: one soul tied in sinews,
One white horse drowned, and all the unconquered pinnacles
Of God's city and Babylon's

Must wait, while here Suso's
Hand hones his tack and needles,
Scouraging to sores his own red sluices
For the relish of heaven, relentless, dousing with prickles
Of horsehair...Read more of this...



by Voznesensky, Andrei
...A poet can't be in disfavour, 
 he needs no awards, no fame. 
 A star has no setting whatever, 
 no black nor a golden frame. 

 A star can't be killed with a stone, or 
 award, or that kind of stuff. 
 He'll bear the blow of a fawner 
 lamenting he's not big enough. 

 What matters is music and fervour, 
 not fame, nor abuse, anyway. 
...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...kening, condensing all his light;
in spite of all the dreaming
squandered upon him with that look,
suffers our uses and abuses,
sinks through the drift of bodies,
sinks through the drift of vlasses
to evening to the beggar in the park
who, weary, without lamp or book
 prepares stupendous studies:
 the fiery event
 of every day in endless
 endless assent....Read more of this...

by Shakespeare, William
...why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own.
I may be straight though they themselves be bevel.
By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown,
Unless this general evil they maintain:
All men are bad, and in their badness reign....Read more of this...

by Shakespeare, William
...why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own:
I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel;
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown;
Unless this general evil they maintain,
All men are bad, and in their badness reign....Read more of this...



by Lowell, Amy
...s, and poems, and plays.
My swords are tempered for every speech,
For fencing wit, or to carve a breach
Through old abuses the world condones.
In another room are my grindstones and hones,
For whetting razors and putting a point
On daggers, sometimes I even anoint
The blades with a subtle poison, so
A twofold result may follow the blow.
These are purchased by men who feel
The need of stabbing society's heel,
Which egotism has brought them to think
Is set on their ...Read more of this...

by Riley, James Whitcomb
...g for cigarettes,
Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous,
And dying to say something unanswerable.

The moon, too, abuses her subjects,
But in the daytime she is ridiculous.
Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand,
Arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity,
White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide.

No day is safe from news of you,
Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me....Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...tle

They found their talent to persevere
In thinness, to come, later,

Into our bad dreams, their menace
Not guns, not abuses,

But a thin silence.
Wrapped in flea-ridded donkey skins,

Empty of complaint, forever
Drinking vinegar from tin cups: they wore

The insufferable nimbus of the lot-drawn
Scapegoat. But so thin,

So weedy a race could not remain in dreams,
Could not remain outlandish victims

In the contracted country of the head
Any more than the old woman i...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...chest, exhausted from the haste.

And only conscience, scarier with each day,
Wants a great ransom and for this abuses.
Closing the face, I answer her this way..
But there remain no tears and no excuses.



x x x

To lose the freshness of the words and sense, for us,
Is it same as for an artist to lose vision,
Or for an actor -- voice and motion,
Or for a gorgeous woman -- her finesse?

But do not seek now for yourself to keep
What heav...Read more of this...

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