Famous Approximate Poems by Famous Poets

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

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On The Move Man You Gotta Go

...pose, or both, 
One moves with an uncertain violence 
Under the dust thrown by a baffled sense 
Or the dull thunder of approximate words. 

On motorcycles, up the road, they come: 
Small, black, as flies hanging in heat, the Boy, 
Until the distance throws them forth, their hum 
Bulges to thunder held by calf and thigh. 
In goggles, donned impersonality, 
In gleaming jackets trophied with the dust, 
They strap in doubt--by hiding it, robust-- 
And almost hear a meaning in th...Read more of this...
by Gunn, Thom


The Legend Of The One-Eyed Man

...ays
to do it, then, they'd understand.
They figured it weighed enough
to support a man. They said,
fifteen stone is the approximate weight
of a thief.

Its ugliness is a matter of custom.
If there was a mistake made
then the Crucifix was constructed wrong . . .
not from the quality of the pine,
not from hanging a mirror,
not from dropping the studding or the drill
but from having an inspriation.
But Judas was not a genius
or under the auspices of an inspiration.

I don't know...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

What Are Big Girls Made Of?

...y morning, 
fits herself into machines of weights 
and pulleys to heave and grunt, 
an image in her mind she can never 
approximate, a body of rosy 
glass that never wrinkles, 
never grows, never fades. She 
sits at the table closing her eyes to food 
hungry, always hungry: 
a woman made of pain. 

A cat or dog approaches another, 
they sniff noses. They sniff asses. 
They bristle or lick. They fall 
in love as often as we do, 
as passionately. But they fall 
in love or lust ...Read more of this...
by Piercy, Marge

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