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Famous Basements Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Ginsberg, Allen
...aded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in 
 dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and 
 picked themselves up out of basements hung 
 over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third 
 Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy- 
 ment offices, 
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on 
 the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the 
 East River to open to a room full of steamheat 
 and opium, 
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment 
 cliff-banks of t...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...s long arcades,
Until he reach'd the great main cupola;
There standing fierce beneath, he stampt his foot,
And from the basements deep to the high towers
Jarr'd his own golden region; and before
The quavering thunder thereupon had ceas'd,
His voice leapt out, despite of godlike curb,
To this result: "O dreams of day and night!
O monstrous forms! O effigies of pain!
O spectres busy in a cold, cold gloom!
O lank-eared phantoms of black-weeded pools!
Why do I know ye? why have I...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...and 
 Still mockingly their empire does refuse. 
 
 Three marble triangles seem to pierce the sky, 
 And hide their basements from the curious eye. 
 Mountains—with waves of ashes covered o'er! 
 In graduated blocks of six feet square 
 From golden base to top, from earth to air 
 Their ever heightening monstrous steps they bore. 
 
 No scorching blast could daunt the sleepless ken 
 Of roseate Sphinx, and god of marble green, 
 Which stood as guardians o'er the s...Read more of this...

by Lee, Laurie
...On eves of cold, when slow coal fires,
rooted in basements, burn and branch,
brushing with smoke the city air;
When quartered moons pale in the sky,
and neons glow along the dark
like deadly nightshade on a briar;
Above the muffled traffic then
I hear the owl, and at his note
I shudder in my private chair.
For like an auger he has come
to roost among our crumbling walls,
his blooded talons sheathed in ...Read more of this...

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