Famous Anti Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Letter From Li Po

...g
spring from dead leaves, our birth from death.
And all is text, is holy text. Sheepfold Hill
becomes its name for us, anti yet is still
unnamed, unnamable, a book of trees
before it was a book for men or sheep,
before it was a book for words. Words, words,
for it is scarlet now, and brown, and red,
and yellow where the birches have not shed,
where, in another week, the rocks will show.
And in this marriage of text and thing how can we know
where most the meaning lies? We cl...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad


a reader's de profundis

...e congregation cowers

da vinci was an artist scientist (probably a necromancer)
had his own black sun – dabbled in the anti-matter
that official truth hates (creates) – that nurtures riddles 
through passageways that breed the ill-reputed answer
(soiled honour’s defence against sly caesar’s fiddles)
hissing its way lightwards through conspiracy chatter

christ had a woman at his right hand – locked together
(so da vinci had the painting say) like the letter m
the rumoured wh...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

An Evening With John Heath-stubbs

...hat word was spoken there.”



The best reader of the century, if not the best poet.

Resonant, mesmeric, his verse the anti-type of mine,

Classical, not personal, Apollonian not Dionysian

And most unconfessional but nonetheless a poet

Deserving honour in his eighty-fifth year.



Thirty people crowded into a room

With stacked chairs like a Sunday School

A table of pamphlets looked over but not bought

A lacquered screen holding court, a century’s junk.

An ivory dial te...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Anti-Profanity

...I do not swear because I am
A sweet and sober guy;
I cannot vent a single damn
However hard I try.
And in viruperative way,
Though I recall it well,
I never, never, never say
A naughty word like hell.

To rouse my wrath you need not try,
I'm milder than a lamb;
However you may rile me I
Refuse to say: Goddam!
In circumstances fury-fraught
My tongue is alwa...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Babi Yar

...hose with unclean hands 
have often made a jingle of your purest name. 
I know the goodness of my land. 
How vile these anti-Semites-
 without a qualm 
they pompously called themselves 
the Union of the Russian People! 
I seem to be
 Anne Frank 
transparent 
 as a branch in April. 
And I love.
 And have no need of phrases. 
My need 
 is that we gaze into each other. 
How little we can see
 or smell! 
We are denied the leaves, 
 we are denied the sky. 
Yet we can do so much --...Read more of this...
by Yevtushenko, Yevgeny


Drunken Memories Of Anne Sexton

...The first and last time I met
my ex-lover Anne Sexton was at
a protest poetry reading against
some anti-constitutional war in Asia
when some academic son of a *****,
to test her reputation as a drunk,
gave her a beer glass full of wine
after our reading. She drank
it all down while staring me
full in the face and then said
"I don't care what you think,
you know," as if I was
her ex-what, husband, lover,
what? And just as I
was just about to say I
loved he...Read more of this...
by Dugan, Alan

Ego Dominus Tuus

...the stream
And look most like me, being indeed my double,
And prove of all imaginable things
The most unlike, being my anti-self,
And, standing by these characters, disclose
All that I seek; and whisper it as though
He were afraid the birds, who cry aloud
Their momentary cries before it is dawn,
Would carry it away to blasphemous men....Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler

Having it Out with Melancholy

...ndershirts 
with snaps; among red tin lunch boxes
and report cards in ugly brown slipcases. 
I was already yours -- the anti-urge, 
the mutilator of souls.



2BOTTLES


Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin, 
Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax, 
Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft. 
The coated ones smell sweet or have 
no smell; the powdery ones smell 
like the chemistry lab at school 
that made me hold my breath.



3SUGGESTION FROM A FRIEND


You wouldn't be so depressed
if you really ...Read more of this...
by Kenyon, Jane

Leeds

...oulevards

O Quartier Latin, crowded street caf?s

With white and scarlet awnings, gold

Adornings on stone cupolas, Byzantine domes

And plinths of equine statuary before

The Gare du Nord, grumbling fading

Faience of the Gare de l’Est?



Often, O how often, did I mingle with your crowds

Crossing the Pont Mirabeau in their Sunday best,

Regretting my lost loves, watching the barges

Snail along the Seine, hearing the bells

Of the Angelus dawn?



II



Exiled in the sout...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Leeds 2002

...poor

Air-conditioned thirty-foot limos, fibre-optic lit,

Uniformed chauffeurs fully trained in close protection

And anti-hijack techniques, simply the best –

See for yourself in mirrored ceilings.

See for yourself the screaming youth

Soaring psychotic one Sunday afternoon

Staggering round the new coach station

"I’ll beat him to death the day I see him next"





Fifty yards away Millgarth police station’s 

Fifty foot banner proclaims ‘Let’s fight crime together’

I ...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Part 3 of Trout Fishing in America

...ion side of the mountain.

 He was, of course, a Jew, a retired merchant seaman

who had been torpedoed in the North Atlantic and floated

there day after day until death did not want him. He had a

young wife, a heart attack, a Volkswagen and a home in

Marin County. He liked the works of George Orwell, Richard

Aldington and Edmund Wilson.

 He learned about life at sixteen, first from Dostoevsky

and then from the whores of New Orleans.

 The bookstore was a parking lot fo...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Part 5 of Trout Fishing in America

...ettes lying around. They were gone

before they hit the ground. Looking back on it, you might

say that Rebel Smith was anti-mud puddle, but then you migl

not say that at all.












THE SALT

CREEK COYOTES





High and lonesome and steady, it's the smell of sheep down

in the valley that has done it to them. Here all afternoon in

the rain I've been listening to the sound of the coyotes up on

Salt Creek.

 The smell of the sheep grazing in the valley has done it

to ...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Proclamation Without Pretension

...
the force that is direct pure sober 
UNIQUE we are in search of NOTHING
we affirm the VITALITY of every IN-
STANT

the anti-philosophy of spontaneous acrobatics

At this moment I hate the man who whispers
before the intermission-eau de cologne-
sour theatre. THE JOYOUS WIND

If each man says the opposite it is because he is
right

Get ready for the action of the geyser of our blood 
-submarine formation of transchromatic aero-
planes, cellular metals numbered in
the flight o...Read more of this...
by Tzara, Tristan

Temporary Poem Of My Time

...you can't get rid of it.
They throw stones, throw stones at me
In 1936, 1938, 1948, 1988,
Semites throw at Semites and anti-Semites at anti-Semites,
Evil men throw and just men throw,
Sinners throw and tempters throw,
Geologists throw and theologists throw,
Archaelogists throw and archhooligans throw,
Kidneys throw stones and gall bladders throw,
Head stones and forehead stones and the heart of a stone,
Stones shaped like a screaming mouth
And stones fitting your eyes
Like a...Read more of this...
by Amichai, Yehuda

The Antiworlds

...There is Bukashkin, our neighbor, 
 in underpants of blotting paper, 
 and, like balloons, the Antiworlds 
 hang up above him in the vaults. 

 Up there, like a magic daemon, 
 he smartly rules the Universe, 
 Antibukashkin lies there giving 
 Lollobrigida a caress. 

 The Anti-great-academician 
 has got a blotting paper vision. 

 Long live creative Antiworlds, 
 great fantasy amidst daft words! 
 There are wise men and stupid peasants, 
 there are ...Read more of this...
by Voznesensky, Andrei

The Ballad of the Anti-Puritan

...They spoke of Progress spiring round, 
Of light and Mrs Humphrey Ward-- 
It is not true to say I frowned, 
Or ran about the room and roared; 
I might have simply sat and snored-- 
I rose politely in the club 
And said, `I feel a little bored; 
Will someone take me to a pub?' 

The new world's wisest did surround 
Me; and it pains me to record 
I did not th...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Benefactors Of The Little Box

...ss

Piece her bloated emptiness
And let ooze
All the blue cosmic blood she gathered

We'll sweet her clean of stars
And anti-stars
And everything else that rots inside her

We won't make her suffer
We'll simply put her together again

We'll give back to the little box
Her pure inconspicuousness...Read more of this...
by Popa, Vasko

The Eagle The Sow And The Cat

...h boist'rous Fears, 
She from her helpless Young in haste departs, 
Whilst Puss ascends, to practice farther Arts. 
The Anti-chamber pass'd, she scratch'd the Door; 
The Eagle, ne'er alarum'd so before, 
Bids her come in, and look the Cause be great, 
That makes her thus disturb the Royal Seat; 
Nor think, of Mice and Rats some pest'ring Tale 
Shall, in excuse of Insolence, prevail. 
Alas! my Gracious Lady, quoth the Cat, 
I think not of such Vermin; Mouse, or Rat 
To me are ...Read more of this...
by Finch, Anne Kingsmill

The Lotos-eaters

...2003-2006 Gunnar Bengtsson, Poetry Connection. All Rights Reserved. 
Internet Advertising | Collectibles | Ringtones | Anti Aging Skin Care | Buy Anything On eBay 

...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Vision of Judgment

...ther more nor less than that Mr. S. has been laughed at a little in some recent publications, as he was of yore in the 'Anti-jacobin,' by his present patrons. Hence all this 'skimble-scamble stuff' about 'Satanic,' and so forth. However, it is worthy of him — 'qualis ab incepto.' 

If there is anything obnoxious to the political opinions of a portion of the public in the following poem, they may thank Mr. Southey. He might have written hexameters, as he has written everything...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

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