Famous Attempting Poems by Famous Poets

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White Hands

 FOR the second time in a year this lady with the white hands is brought to the west room second floor of a famous sanatorium.
Her husband is a cornice manufacturer in an Iowa town and the lady has often read papers on Victorian poets before the local literary club.
Yesterday she washed her hands forty seven times during her waking...Read more of this...

The Joyous Malingerer

 Who is the happy husband? Why, indeed,
'Tis he who's useless in the time of need;
Who, asked to unclasp a bracelet or a neckless,
Contrives to be utterly futile, fumbling, feckless,
Or when a zipper nips his loved one's back
Cannot restore the zipper to its track.
Another time, not wishing to be flayed,
She will not use him as a lady's maid.

Stove-wise he's the...Read more of this...

Sappho - A Monodrama

 Argument.

To leap from the promontory of LEUCADIA was believed by the Greeks to be
a remedy for hopeless love, if the self-devoted victim escaped with
life. Artemisia lost her life in the dangerous experiment: and Sappho is
said thus to have perished, in attempting to cure her passion for Phaon.


SAPPHO

(Scene the promontory of Leucadia.)

This is the spot:--'tis here Tradition says
That hopeless Love...Read more of this...

Nirvana

 not much chance,
completely cut loose from
purpose,
he was a young man
riding a bus
through North Carolina
on the wat to somewhere
and it began to snow
and the bus stopped 
at a little cafe
in the hills
and the passengers 
entered.
he sat at the counter
with the others,
he ordered and the 
food arived.
the meal was
particularly
good 
and the
coffee.
the waitress was 
unlike the women
he had
known.
she was unaffected,
there was a...Read more of this...

Salmon

 I watched them once, at dusk, on television, run,
in our motel room half-way through
Nebraska, quick, glittering, past beauty, past
the importance of beauty.,
archaic,
not even hungry, not even endangered, driving deeper and deeper
into less. They leapt up falls, ladders,
and rock, tearing and leaping, a gold river,
and a blue river traveling
in opposite directions.
They would not stop, resolution of will
and helplessness, as the...Read more of this...

Fit the Fifth ( Hunting of the Snark )

 The Beaver's Lesson 

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; 
They pursued it with forks and hope; 
They threatened its life with a railway-share; 
They charmed it with smiles and soap. 

Then the Butcher contrived an ingenious plan 
For making a separate sally; 
And fixed on a spot unfrequented by man, 
A dismal and desolate valley....Read more of this...

As Summer into Autumn slips

 As Summer into Autumn slips
And yet we sooner say
"The Summer" than "the Autumn," lest
We turn the sun away,

And almost count it an Affront
The presence to concede
Of one however lovely, not
The one that we have loved --

So we evade the charge of Years
On one attempting shy
The Circumvention of the Shaft
Of Life's Declivity....Read more of this...

The Theory

 The big one went to sleep as to die and dreamed he
became a tiny one. So tiny as to have lost all substance. To have
become as theoretical as a point. 

 Then someone said, get up, big one, you're not doing
yourself any good. You puddle and stagnate in your weight.
Best to be up and toward. It irrigates you. 

...Read more of this...

A Hillside Thaw

 To think to know the country and now know
The hillside on the day the sun lets go
Ten million silver lizards out of snow!
As often as I've seen it done before
I can't pretend to tell the way it's done.
It looks as if some magic of the sun
Lifted the rug that bred them on the floor
And the light breaking on them...Read more of this...

The Story of Uriah

 Jack Barrett went to Quetta
 Because they told him to.
He left his wife at Simla
 On three-fourths his monthly screw.
Jack Barrett died at Quetta
 Ere the next month's pay he drew.

Jack Barrett went to Quetta.
 He didn't understand
The reason of his transfer
 From the pleasant mountain-land.
The season was September,
 And it killed him out of hand.

Jack Barrett went to...Read more of this...

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