Famous Astonishing Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Astonishing poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous astonishing poems. These examples illustrate what a famous astonishing poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert Pinsky
to Robert Hass and in memory of Elliot Gilbert
Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,
Bashõ and his friends go out to view the moon;
In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter,
The secret courtesy that courses like ichor
Through the old form of the rude, full-scale joke,
Impossible to tell in writing. "Bashõ"
He named himself, "Banana Tree": banana
After the plant some grateful students...Read more of this...
by
Kenn Nesbitt
When Grandma goes for gold in
The Olympic games this year,
She’ll laugh at her competitors
And make them quake with fear.
She’s ninety-nine years old
But, in athletics, she’s been blessed.
The trouble is she can’t decide
Which sport she plays the best.
She’s such an ace at archery.
She’s queen of the canoe.
She’s tough to top at taekwondo
And table tennis too.
She dominates the diving board.
She tromps the...Read more of this...
by
Jack Gilbert
How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying...Read more of this...
by
Czeslaw Milosz
The road led straight to the temple.
Notre Dame, though not Gothic at all.
The huge doors were closed. I chose one on the side,
Not to the main building-to its left wing,
The one in green copper, worn into gaps below.
I pushed. Then it was revealed:
An astonishing large hall, in warm light.
Great statues of sitting women-goddesses,
In draped robes, marked it with a...Read more of this...
by
Marilyn Hacker
We pace each other for a long time.
I packed my anger with the beef jerky.
You are the baby on the mountain. I am
in a cold stream where I led you.
I packed my anger with the beef jerky.
You are the woman sticking her tongue out
in a cold stream where I led you.
You are the woman with spring water...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
whirligig twister
dancer prancer
st vitus’s quester
chancer romancer
the inkman cometh
from that nether world
where dream and coincidence
are darkly furled
accident rubbed him
into puzzling light
he is what he isn’t
(he’s the geist of zeit)
whirligig twister
dancer prancer
st vitus’s quester
chancer romancer
he cannot move
but he never stops
particle-wave
(ask the science-cops)
all creation swirls
from his restless frame
he isn’t what he is
that’s the inkman’s game
whirligig twister
dancer prancer
st vitus’s quester
chancer romancer
(ii) ninkam poop
so...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
Sitting in outpatients
With my own minor ills
Dawn’s depression lifts
To the lilt of amitryptilene,
A double dose for a day’s journey
To a distant ward.
The word was out that Simmons
Had died eighteen months after
An aneurism at sixty seven.
The meeting he proposed in his second letter
Could never happen: a few days later
A Christmas card in Gaelic - Nollaig Shona -
Then silence, an unbearable...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
Let me not, ever, to the marriage in Cana
Of Galilee admit the slightest sentiment
Of doubt about the astonishing and sustaining manna
Of chance and choice to throw a shadow's element
Of disbelief in truth -- Love is not love
Nor is the love of love its truth in consciousness
If it can be made hesitant by any crow or dove or
seeming...Read more of this...
by
Amy Clampitt
An ingenuity too astonishing
to be quite fortuitous is
this bog full of sundews, sphagnum-
lined and shaped like a teacup.
A step
down and you're into it; a
wilderness swallows you up:
ankle-, then knee-, then midriff-
to-shoulder-deep in wetfooted
understory, an overhead
spruce-tamarack horizon hinting
you'll never get out of here.
But the sun
among the sundews, down there,
is so bright, an underfoot
webwork of carnivorous rubies,
a star-swarm thick...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Genius, like gold and precious stones,
is chiefly prized because of its rarity.
Geniuses are people who dash of weird, wild,
incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility,
and get booming drunk and sleep in the gutter.
Genius elevates its possessor to ineffable spheres
far above the vulgar world and fills his soul
with regal contempt for the gross and sordid...Read more of this...
by
Khosrovidukht
More astonishing to me
than the lyrics made for you
more amazing than the music composed
for your death
is the sound of the sobbing mourning
you, Lord Vahan, chosen of God
...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
do you think an old heart can’t sing
do you think an old heart can’t dance
with a love that belongs to spring –
nor i – till i took this glance
in a mirror long put-by – denied
the least touch of light (there being
no cause but to let it hide)
yet now there’s this sudden seeing
this astonishing flow of longing
that gives the dulled...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
A most astonishing thing --
Seventy years have I lived;
(Hurrah for the flowers of Spring,
For Spring is here again.)
Seventy years have I lived
No ragged beggar-man,
Seventy years have I lived,
Seventy years man and boy,
And never have I danced for joy....Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
TO her, for I must still regard her
As feminine in her degree,
Who has been my unkind bombarder
Year after year, in grief and glee,
Year after year, with oaken tree;
And yet betweenwhiles my laudator
In terms astonishing to me -
To the Right Reverend The Spectator
I here, a humble dedicator,
Bring the last apples from my tree.
In tones of love, in tones of warning,
She...Read more of this...
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