Famous Basso Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Favrile

by Mark Doty
 Glassmakers,
at century's end,
compounded metallic lusters

in reference
to natural sheens (dragonfly
and beetle wings,

marbled light on kerosene)
and invented names
as coolly lustrous

as their products'
scarab-gleam: Quetzal,
Aurene, Favrile.

Suggesting,
respectively, the glaze
of feathers,

that sun-shot fog
of which halos
are composed,

and -- what?
What to make of Favrile,
Tiffany's term

for his coppery-rose
flushed with gold
like the alchemized

atmosphere of sunbeams
in a Flemish room?
Faux Moorish,

fake Japanese,
his lamps illumine
chiefly themselves,

copying waterlilies'
bronzy stems,
wisteria or trout scales;

surfaces burnished
like...Read more of this...

To Fly In Just Your Suit

by Les Murray
 Humans are flown, or fall;
humans can't fly.
We're down with the gravity-stemmers,
rare, thick-boned, often basso.

Most animals above the tides are airborne.
Typically tuned keen, they
throw the ground away with wire feet
and swoop rings round it.

Magpies, listening askance
for their food in and under lawn,
strut so hair-trigger they almost
dangle on earth, out of the air.

Nearly anything can make their
tailcoats break into wings....Read more of this...

Icicles Round A Tree In Dumfriesshire

by Ruth Padel
 We're talking different kinds of vulnerability here.

These icicles aren't going to last for ever 

Suspended in the ultra violet rays of a Dumfries sun.

But here they hang, a frozen whirligig of lightning,

And the famous American sculptor 

Who scrambles the world with his tripod

For strangeness au naturel, got sunset to fill them. 

It's not comfortable, a double helix of opalescent...Read more of this...

Fleckno an English Priest at Rome

by Andrew Marvell
 Oblig'd by frequent visits of this man,
Whom as Priest, Poet, and Musician,
I for some branch of Melchizedeck took,
(Though he derives himself from my Lord Brooke)
I sought his Lodging; which is at the Sign
Of the sad Pelican; Subject divine
For Poetry: There three Stair Cases high,
Which signifies his triple property,
I found at last a Chamber, as 'twas said,
But seem'd a Coffin...Read more of this...

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