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Famous Barbara Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Tebb, Barry
...the Liffey.



All my three muses have abandoned me. Daisy in Asia,

Brenda protesting outside the Royal Free, Barbara seeing clients at the C.A.B.

Past Saltaire’s Mill, the world’s eighth wonder,

The new electric train whisperglides on wet rails

Past Shipley’s fairy glen and other tourist trails

Past Kirkstall’s abandoned abbey and redundant forge

To Grandma Wild’s in Keighley where I sit and gorge.



I’ve travelled on the Haworth bus so often
...Read more of this...



by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...s with their crimson bars,

Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw not one.

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;

Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled down;

In her attic window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet,

Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced; the old flag met ...Read more of this...

by Amichai, Yehuda
...ts.
Everything will be as before: Abraham will again
Be Abram. Sarah will be Sarai.


trans. Benjamin & Barbara Harshav...Read more of this...

by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...!


Wille wo wo wo!

Wito 
hu!

I knew them all; ay, I knew them straight;
First, Anna, then Ursula, Eve, and Kate,
And Barbara, Lizzy, and Bet as well;
And forming a ring, they began to yell:

Wille wau wau wau!


Wille wo wo wo!

Wito 
hu!

Then call'd I their names with angry threat:
"What wouldst thou, Anna? What wouldst thou, Bet?"
At hearing my voice, themselves they shook,
And howling and yelling, to flight they took.

Wille wau wau wau!


Wille wo wo wo!

Wito 
hu...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...led up like Christ 
and she said of it: 
That's when I was forty-two, 
down in Rockport with a hat on for the sun, 
and Barbara drew a line drawing. 
We were, at that moment, drinking vodka 
and ginger beer and there was a chill in the air, 
although it was July, and she gave me her sweater 
to bundle up in. The next summer Skeezix tied 
strings in that hat when we were fishing in Maine. 
(It had gone into the lake twice.) 
Of such moments is happiness made.Read more of this...



by Sexton, Anne
...It is half winter, half spring,
and Barbara and I are standing
confronting the ocean.
Its mouth is open very wide,
and it has dug up its green,
throwing it, throwing it at the shore.
You say it is angry.
I say it is like a kicked Madonna.
Its womb collapses, drunk with its fever.
We breathe in its fury.

I, the inlander,
am here with you for just a small space.
I am...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...For Barbara

I step off the pavement

like a precipice

Engage the darting sunshafts

in a duel

In the wall’s shadow I web

my prints to pattern

The moist stone virgins.

The lawns are white-coated

their throats red

With berries and bird-song;

in petrified gardens

Hyacinth tongues lip the wall.

Leaf mould muffles my heel-taps

the enormous trees t...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...even years: muse number two

Passed into the blue



There is another muse, who makes me chronologically confused.

Barbara, who overlaps both two and three

And still is there, somewhere in Leeds.

Who does remember me and who, almost alone.

Inspired my six novellas: we write and

Talk sometimes and in a crisis she is there for me,



Muse number four, though absent for a month in Indonesia.

Remains. I doubt if there will be a fifth.



There is a p...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...ut off my dress.

I cried, "Oh Jesus, help me! Oh Jesus Christ!"
and the nurse replied, "Wrong name. My name
is Barbara," and hung me in an odd device,
a buck's extension and a Balkan overhead frame.

The orthopedic man declared,
"You'll be down for a year." His scoop. His news.
He opened the skin. He scraped. He pared
and drilled through bone for his four-inch screws.

That takes brute strength like pushing a cow
up hill. I tell you, i...Read more of this...

by Field, Eugene
...I.--TO MISTRESS BARBARA

There were three cavaliers, all handsome and true,
On Valentine's day came a maiden to woo,
And quoth to your mother: "Good-morrow, my dear,
We came with some songs for your daughter to hear!"

Your mother replied: "I'll be pleased to convey
To my daughter what things you may sing or may say!"

Then the first cavalier sung: "My pretty red rose,
I'll...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...s 

Chrysler engines 

shoots thru Texaco pipelines 

blackens ocean from broken Gulf tankers 
spills onto Santa Barbara beaches from 

Standard of California derricks offshore. 

...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Barbara poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs