Famous Bearable Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Dream Song 59: Henrys Meditation in the Kremlin

by John Berryman
 Down on the cathedrals, as from the Giralda
in a land no crueller, and over the walls
to domes & river look
from Great John's belfry, Ivan-Veliky,
whose thirty-one are still
to hail who storms no father's throne. Bell, book

& cradle rule, in silence. Hour by hour
from time to time with holy oil
touch yet the forehead eyelids nose
lips ears breast fists of Kruschev, for...Read more of this...

Flophouse

by Charles Bukowski
 you haven't lived
until you've been in a
flophouse
with nothing but one
light bulb
and 56 men
squeezed together
on cots
with everybody
snoring
at once
and some of those
snores
so
deep and
gross and
unbelievable-
dark
snotty
gross
subhuman
wheezings
from hell
itself.
your mind
almost breaks
under those
death-like
sounds
and the
intermingling
odors:
hard
unwashed socks
pissed and
shitted 
underwear
and over it all
slowly circulating
air
much like that
emanating from 
uncovered
garbage
cans.
and those
bodies
in the dark
fat and
thin
and
bent
some
legless
armless
some 
mindless
and worst of
all:
the total
absence of
hope
it shrouds
them
covers them
totally.
it's not
bearable.
you get
up
go out
walk the 
streets
up and 
down
sidewalks
past buildings
around the 
corner
and...Read more of this...

At the Fishhouses

by Elizabeth Bishop
Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to...Read more of this...

The Black Virgin

by G K Chesterton
 One in thy thousand statues we salute thee 
On all thy thousand thrones acclaim and claim 
Who walk in forest of thy forms and faces 
Walk in a forest calling on one name 
And, most of all, how this thing may be so 
Who know thee not are mystified to know
That one cries "Here she stands" and one cries...Read more of this...

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