Famous Artifact Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Everybody Knows

...ague is coming 
Everybody knows that it's moving fast 
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman 
Are just a shining artifact of the past 
Everybody knows the scene is dead 
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed 
That will disclose 
What everybody knows 
And everybody knows that you're in trouble 
Everybody knows what you've been through 
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary 
To the beach of Malibu 
Everybody knows it's coming apart 
Take one last look at this Sacred...Read more of this...
by Cohen, Leonard


Manhole Covers

...d whelked and pocked and smashed
With the great company names
(Gentle Bethlehem, smiling United States).
This rustproof artifact of my street,
Long after roads are melted away will lie
Sidewise in the grave of the iron-old world,
Bitten at the edges,
Strong with its cryptic American,
Its dated beauty....Read more of this...
by Shapiro, Karl

Pearls

...*

Your brethren strung around my neck,
dangling from my earlobes.
The imperfections the jeweler slights, I praise.

*

Artifact of a biological process,
why do we expect
symmetry from a grain of sand?

*

Praise the oblong beauty
of you, solidified raindrops,
your stony quietude.

*

Let me praise the waters that bestow
your milky luster,
worshipped to ensure a bountiful hunt.

*

Manyoshu poems praised the ama,
female divers, who collected you,
as gently as quail eggs.

*

...Read more of this...
by Geyer, Bernadette

The Monument

...
what can it prove?
I am tired of breathing this eroded air,
this dryness in which the monument is cracking."

It is an artifact 
of wood. Wood holds together better
than sea or cloud or and could by itself,
much better than real sea or sand or cloud.
It chose that way to grow and not to move.
The monument's an object, yet those decorations,
carelessly nailed, looking like nothing at all,
give it away as having life, and wishing;
wanting to be a monument, to cherish something...Read more of this...
by Bishop, Elizabeth

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