Best Famous Demanding Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Demanding poems. This is a select list of the best famous Demanding poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Demanding poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of demanding poems.

Search and read the best famous Demanding poems, articles about Demanding poems, poetry blogs, or anything else Demanding poem related using the PoetrySoup search engine at the top of the page.

• All Famous Demanding Poems

Written by Marianne Moore | Marriage This institution, perhaps one should say enterprise out of respect for which one says one need not change one's mind about a thing one has believed in, requiring public promises of one's intention to fulfill a private obligation: I wonder what Adam and Eve think of it by this time, this firegilt steel alive with goldenness; how bright it shows -- "of circular traditions and impostures, committing many spoils," requiring all one's criminal ingenuity to avoid! Psychology which explains everything explains nothing and we are still in doubt. Eve: beautiful woman -- I have seen her when she was so handsome she gave me a start, able to write simultaneously in three languages -- English, German and French and talk in the meantime; equally positive in demanding a commotion and in stipulating quiet: "I should like to be alone;" to which the visitor replies, "I should like to be alone; why not be alone together?" Below the incandescent stars below the incandescent fruit, the strange experience of beauty; its existence is too much; it tears one to pieces and each fresh wave of consciousness is poison. "See her, see her in this common world," the central flaw in that first crystal-fine experiment, this amalgamation which can never be more than an interesting possibility, describing it as "that strange paradise unlike flesh, gold, or stately buildings, the choicest piece of my life: the heart rising in its estate of peace as a boat rises with the rising of the water;" constrained in speaking of the serpent -- that shed snakeskin in the history of politeness not to be returned to again -- that invaluable accident exonerating Adam. And he has beauty also; it's distressing -- the O thou to whom, from whom, without whom nothing -- Adam; "something feline, something colubrine" -- how true! a crouching mythological monster in that Persian miniature of emerald mines, raw silk -- ivory white, snow white, oyster white and six others -- that paddock full of leopards and giraffes -- long lemonyellow bodies sown with trapezoids of blue. Alive with words, vibrating like a cymbal touched before it has been struck, he has prophesied correctly -- the industrious waterfall, "the speedy stream which violently bears all before it, at one time silent as the air and now as powerful as the wind." "Treading chasms on the uncertain footing of a spear," forgetting that there is in woman a quality of mind which is an instinctive manifestation is unsafe, he goes on speaking in a formal, customary strain of "past states," the present state, seals, promises, the evil one suffered, the good one enjoys, hell, heaven, everything convenient to promote one's joy." There is in him a state of mind by force of which, perceiving what it was not intended that he should, "he experiences a solemn joy in seeing that he has become an idol." Plagued by the nightingale in the new leaves, with its silence -- not its silence but its silences, he says of it: "It clothes me with a shirt of fire." "He dares not clap his hands to make it go on lest it should fly off; if he does nothing, it will sleep; if he cries out, it will not understand." Unnerved by the nightingale and dazzled by the apple, impelled by "the illusion of a fire effectual to extinguish fire," compared with which the shining of the earth is but deformity -- a fire "as high as deep as bright as broad as long as life itself," he stumbles over marriage, "a very trivial object indeed" to have destroyed the attitude in which he stood -- the ease of the philosopher unfathered by a woman. Unhelpful Hymen! "a kind of overgrown cupid" reduced to insignificance by the mechanical advertising parading as involuntary comment, by that experiment of Adam's with ways out but no way in -- the ritual of marriage, augmenting all its lavishness; its fiddle-head ferns, lotus flowers, opuntias, white dromedaries, its hippopotamus -- nose and mouth combined in one magnificent hopper, "the crested screamer -- that huge bird almost a lizard," its snake and the potent apple. He tells us that "for love that will gaze an eagle blind, that is like a Hercules climbing the trees in the garden of the Hesperides, from forty-five to seventy is the best age," commending it as a fine art, as an experiment, a duty or as merely recreation. One must not call him ruffian nor friction a calamity -- the fight to be affectionate: "no truth can be fully known until it has been tried by the tooth of disputation." The blue panther with black eyes, the basalt panther with blue eyes, entirely graceful -- one must give them the path -- the black obsidian Diana who "darkeneth her countenance as a bear doth, causing her husband to sigh," the spiked hand that has an affection for one and proves it to the bone, impatient to assure you that impatience is the mark of independence not of bondage. "Married people often look that way" -- "seldom and cold, up and down, mixed and malarial with a good day and bad." "When do we feed?" We occidentals are so unemotional, we quarrel as we feed; one's self is quite lost, the irony preserved in "the Ahasuerus t?te ? t?te banquet" with its "good monster, lead the way," with little laughter and munificence of humor in that quixotic atmosphere of frankness in which "Four o'clock does not exist but at five o'clock the ladies in their imperious humility are ready to receive you"; in which experience attests that men have power and sometimes one is made to feel it. He says, "what monarch would not blush to have a wife with hair like a shaving-brush? The fact of woman is not `the sound of the flute but every poison.'" She says, "`Men are monopolists of stars, garters, buttons and other shining baubles' -- unfit to be the guardians of another person's happiness." He says, "These mummies must be handled carefully -- `the crumbs from a lion's meal, a couple of shins and the bit of an ear'; turn to the letter M and you will find that `a wife is a coffin,' that severe object with the pleasing geometry stipulating space and not people, refusing to be buried and uniquely disappointing, revengefully wrought in the attitude of an adoring child to a distinguished parent." She says, "This butterfly, this waterfly, this nomad that has `proposed to settle on my hand for life.' -- What can one do with it? There must have been more time in Shakespeare's day to sit and watch a play. You know so many artists are fools." He says, "You know so many fools who are not artists." The fact forgot that "some have merely rights while some have obligations," he loves himself so much, he can permit himself no rival in that love. She loves herself so much, she cannot see herself enough -- a statuette of ivory on ivory, the logical last touch to an expansive splendor earned as wages for work done: one is not rich but poor when one can always seem so right. What can one do for them -- these savages condemned to disaffect all those who are not visionaries alert to undertake the silly task of making people noble? This model of petrine fidelity who "leaves her peaceful husband only because she has seen enough of him" -- that orator reminding you, "I am yours to command." "Everything to do with love is mystery; it is more than a day's work to investigate this science." One sees that it is rare -- that striking grasp of opposites opposed each to the other, not to unity, which in cycloid inclusiveness has dwarfed the demonstration of Columbus with the egg -- a triumph of simplicity -- that charitive Euroclydon of frightening disinterestedness which the world hates, admitting: "I am such a cow, if I had a sorrow, I should feel it a long time; I am not one of those who have a great sorrow in the morning and a great joy at noon;" which says: "I have encountered it among those unpretentious proteg?s of wisdom, where seeming to parade as the debater and the Roman, the statesmanship of an archaic Daniel Webster persists to their simplicity of temper as the essence of the matter: `Liberty and union now and forever;' the book on the writing-table; the hand in the breast-pocket."

Written by Adrienne Rich | Stepping Backward Good-by to you whom I shall see tomorrow, Next year and when I'm fifty; still good-by. This is the leave we never really take. If you were dead or gone to live in China The event might draw your stature in my mind. I should be forced to look upon you whole The way we look upon the things we lose. We see each other daily and in segments; Parting might make us meet anew, entire. You asked me once, and I could give no answer, How far dare we throw off the daily ruse, Official treacheries of face and name, Have out our true identity? I could hazard An answer now, if you are asking still. We are a small and lonely human race Showing no sign of mastering solitude Out on this stony planet that we farm. The most that we can do for one another Is let our blunders and our blind mischances Argue a certain brusque abrupt compassion. We might as well be truthful. I should say They're luckiest who know they're not unique; But only art or common interchange Can teach that kindest truth. And even art Can only hint at what disturbed a Melville Or calmed a Mahler's frenzy; you and I Still look from separate windows every morning Upon the same white daylight in the square. And when we come into each other's rooms Once in awhile, encumbered and self-conscious, We hover awkwardly about the threshold And usually regret the visit later. Perhaps the harshest fact is, only lovers-- And once in a while two with the grace of lovers-- Unlearn that clumsiness of rare intrusion And let each other freely come and go. Most of us shut too quickly into cupboards The margin-scribbled books, the dried geranium, The penny horoscope, letters never mailed. The door may open, but the room is altered; Not the same room we look from night and day. It takes a late and slowly blooming wisdom To learn that those we marked infallible Are tragi-comic stumblers like ourselves. The knowledge breeds reserve. We walk on tiptoe, Demanding more than we know how to render. Two-edged discovery hunts us finally down; The human act will make us real again, And then perhaps we come to know each other. Let us return to imperfection's school. No longer wandering after Plato's ghost, Seeking the garden where all fruit is flawless, We must at last renounce that ultimate blue And take a walk in other kinds of weather. The sourest apple makes its wry announcement That imperfection has a certain tang. Maybe we shouldn't turn our pockets out To the last crumb or lingering bit of fluff, But all we can confess of what we are Has in it the defeat of isolation-- If not our own, then someone's, anyway. So I come back to saying this good-by, A sort of ceremony of my own, This stepping backward for another glance. Perhaps you'll say we need no ceremony, Because we know each other, crack and flaw, Like two irregular stones that fit together. Yet still good-by, because we live by inches And only sometimes see the full dimension. Your stature's one I want to memorize-- Your whole level of being, to impose On any other comers, man or woman. I'd ask them that they carry what they are With your particular bearing, as you wear The flaws that make you both yourself and human.

Written by Edgar Bowers | Elegy: Walking the Line Every month or so, Sundays, we walked the line, The limit and the boundary. Past the sweet gum Superb above the cabin, along the wall— Stones gathered from the level field nearby When first we cleared it. (Angry bumblebees Stung the two mules. They kicked. Thirteen, I ran.) And then the field: thread-leaf maple, deciduous Magnolia, hybrid broom, and, further down, In light shade, one Franklinia Alatamaha In solstice bloom, all white, most graciously. On the sunnier slope, the wild plums that my mother Later would make preserves of, to give to friends Or sell, in autumn, with the foxgrape, quince, Elderberry, and muscadine. Around The granite overhang, moist den of foxes; Gradually up a long hill, high in pine, Park-like, years of dry needles on the ground, And dogwood, slopes the settlers terraced; pine We cut at Christmas, berries, hollies, anise, And cones for sale in Mister Haymore’s yard In town, below the Courthouse Square. James Haymore, One of the two good teachers at Boys’ High, Ironic and demanding, chemistry; Mary Lou Culver taught us English: essays, Plot summaries, outlines, meters, kinds of clauses (Noun, adjective, and adverb, five at a time), Written each day and then revised, and she Up half the night to read them once again Through her pince-nez, under a single lamp. Across the road, on a steeper hill, the settlers Set a house, unpainted, the porch fallen in, The road a red clay strip without a bridge, A shallow stream that liked to overflow. Oliver Brand’s mules pulled our station wagon Out of the gluey mire, earth’s rust. Then, here And there, back from the road, the specimen Shrubs and small trees my father planted, some Taller than we were, some in bloom, some berried, And some we still brought water to. We always Paused at the weed-filled hole beside the beech That, one year, brought forth beech nuts by the thousands, A hole still reminiscent of the man Chewing tobacco in among his whiskers My father happened on, who, discovered, told Of dreaming he should dig there for the gold And promised to give half of what he found. During the wars with Germany and Japan, Descendents of the settlers, of Oliver Brand And of that man built Flying Fortresses For Lockheed, in Atlanta; now they build Brick mansions in the woods they left, with lawns To paved and lighted streets, azaleas, camellias Blooming among the pines and tulip trees— Mercedes Benz and Cadillac Republicans. There was another stream further along Divided through a marsh, lined by the fence We stretched to posts with Mister Garner’s help The time he needed cash for his son’s bail And offered all his place. A noble spring Under the oak root cooled his milk and butter. He called me “honey,” working with us there (My father bought three acres as a gift), His wife pale, hair a country orange, voice Uncanny, like a ghost’s, through the open door Behind her, chickens scratching on the floor. Barred Rocks, our chickens; one, a rooster, splendid Sliver and grey, red comb and long sharp spurs, Once chased Aunt Jennie as far as the daphne bed The two big king snakes were familiars of. My father’s dog would challenge him sometimes To laughter and applause. Once, in Stone Mountain, Travelers, stopped for gas, drove off with Smokey; Angrily, grievingly, leaving his work, my father Traced the car and found them way far south, Had them arrested and, bringing Smokey home, Was proud as Sherlock Holmes, and happier. Above the spring, my sister’s cats, black Amy, Grey Junior, down to meet us. The rose trees, Domestic, Asiatic, my father’s favorites. The bridge, marauding dragonflies, the bullfrog, Camellias cracked and blackened by the freeze, Bay tree, mimosa, mountain laurel, apple, Monkey pine twenty feet high, banana shrub, The owls’ tall pine curved like a flattened S. The pump house Mort and I built block by block, Smooth concrete floor, roof pale aluminum Half-covered by a clematis, the pump Thirty feet down the mountain’s granite foot. Mort was the hired man sent to us by Fortune, Childlike enough to lead us. He brought home, Although he could not even drive a tractor, Cheated, a worthless car, which we returned. When, at the trial to garnishee his wages, Frank Guess, the judge, Grandmother’s longtime neighbor, Whose children my mother taught in Cradle Roll, Heard Mort’s examination, he broke in As if in disbelief on the bank’s attorneys: “Gentlemen, must we continue this charade?” Finally, past the compost heap, the garden, Tomatoes and sweet corn for succotash, Okra for frying, Kentucky Wonders, limas, Cucumbers, squashes, leeks heaped round with soil, Lavender, dill, parsley, and rosemary, Tithonia and zinnias between the rows; The greenhouse by the rock wall, used for cuttings In late spring, frames to grow them strong for planting Through winter into summer. Early one morning Mort called out, lying helpless by the bridge. His ashes we let drift where the magnolia We planted as a stem divides the path The others lie, too young, at Silver Hill, Except my mother. Ninety-five, she lives Three thousand miles away, beside the bare Pacific, in rooms that overlook the Mission, The Riviera, and the silver range La Cumbre east. Magnolia grandiflora And one druidic live oak guard the view. Proudly around the walls, she shows her paintings Of twenty years ago: the great oak’s arm Extended, Zeuslike, straight and strong, wisteria Tangled among the branches, amaryllis Around the base; her cat, UC, at ease In marigolds; the weeping cherry, pink And white arms like a blessing to the blue Bird feeder Mort made; cabin, scarlet sweet gum Superb when tribes migrated north and south. Alert, still quick of speech, a little blind, Active, ready for laughter, open to fear, Pity, and wonder that such things may be, Some Sundays, I think, she must walk the line, Aunt Jennie, too, if she were still alive, And Eleanor, whose story is untold, Their presences like muses, prompting me In my small study, all listening to the sea, All of one mind, the true posterity.

Written by Walt Whitman | Give me the Splendid Silent Sun 1 GIVE me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling; Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard; Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows; Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape; Give me fresh corn and wheat—give me serene-moving animals, teaching content; Give me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars; Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers, where I can walk undisturb’d; Give me for marriage a sweet-breath’d woman, of whom I should never tire; Give me a perfect child—give me, away, aside from the noise of the world, a rural, domestic life; Give me to warble spontaneous songs, reliev’d, recluse by myself, for my own ears only; Give me solitude—give me Nature—give me again, O Nature, your primal sanities! —These, demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement, and rack’d by the war-strife;) These to procure, incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart, While yet incessantly asking, still I adhere to my city; Day upon day, and year upon year, O city, walking your streets, Where you hold me enchain’d a certain time, refusing to give me up; Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich’d of soul—you give me forever faces; (O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries; I see my own soul trampling down what it ask’d for.) 2 Keep your splendid, silent sun; Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods; Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards; Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields, where the Ninth-month bees hum; Give me faces and streets! give me these phantoms incessant and endless along the trottoirs! Give me interminable eyes! give me women! give me comrades and lovers by the thousand! Let me see new ones every day! let me hold new ones by the hand every day! Give me such shows! give me the streets of Manhattan! Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching—give me the sound of the trumpets and drums! (The soldiers in companies or regiments—some, starting away, flush’d and reckless; Some, their time up, returning, with thinn’d ranks—young, yet very old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;) —Give me the shores and the wharves heavy-fringed with the black ships! O such for me! O an intense life! O full to repletion, and varied! The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me! The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the torch-light procession! The dense brigade, bound for the war, with high piled military wagons following; People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants; Manhattan streets, with their powerful throbs, with the beating drums, as now; The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even the sight of the wounded;) Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus—with varied chorus, and light of the sparkling eyes; Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.

Written by Mark Hillringhouse | Woolworths for Greg Fallon A kid yells "*************" out the school bus window. I don't think anyone notices the afternoon clouds turning pink along the horizon, sunlight dripping down the stone facades, the ancient names of old stores fading like the last century above the street, above the Spandex women who adjust their prize buttocks, sweating in the sun as I wonder how this city that has no more memory of itself than a river has of rain, survives. Is it just a matter of time, or that peasant woman who tugs my sleeve demanding "peseta" from every passing stranger: I can still smell the hotdog counter and the pretzel carousel. I loved the sound of birds as I entered, the watery bubbles from aquarium filters over by the plants. If I imagined like a child walking with my mother, the store part rainforest, and closed my eyes I was in som tropical country: that feathered blue against the orange of forgotten sunsets after the rain-washed streets erased the footprints of tired mothers who waited in line under the red and gold transom to cash their welfare checks. And maybe we're all feeling the same rage, seeing the up-turned fish tanks stacked against the parakeet cages, sunlight catching on the twisted wire between the shabbiness of an emptied storefront, rays of sunlight poking in to finger the dusty hollowness of barren shelves. Or maybe it's the cheap Plexiglas above the Chinese lettering or the sound of car alarms and sirens blaring us back. The city dead in me swaying down these aisles, like everything else that fell from my life. I walk down Main Street trying to regain my balance behind the men who walk home from sweaty jobs with clenched fists and the women who follow them pulling their children like dogs in the rain.

Written by Peter Orlovsky | Second Poem Morning again, nothing has to be done, maybe buy a piano or make fudge. At least clean the room up for sure like my farther I've done flick the ashes & butts over the bed side on the floor. But frist of all wipe my glasses and drink the water to clean the smelly mouth. A nock on the door, a cat walks in, behind her the Zoo's baby elephant demanding fresh pancakes-I cant stand these hallucinations aney more. Time for another cigerette and then let the curtains rise, then I knowtice the dirt makes a road to the garbage pan No ice box so a dried up grapefruit. Is there any one saintly thing I can do to my room, paint it pink maybe or instal an elevator from the bed to the floor, maybe take a bath on the bed? Whats the use of liveing if I cant make paradise in my own room-land? For this drop of time upon my eyes like the endurance of a red star on a cigerate makes me feel life splits faster than sissors. I know if I could shave myself the bugs around my face would disappear forever. The holes in my shues are only temporary, I understand that. My rug is dirty but whose that isent? There comes a time in life when everybody must take a piss in the sink -here let me paint the window black for a minute. Thro a plate & brake it out of naughtiness-or maybe just innocently accidentally drop it wile walking around the tabol. Before the mirror I look like a sahara desert gost, or on the bed I resemble a crying mummey hollaring for air, or on the tabol I feel like Napoleon. But now for the main task of the day - wash my underwear - two months abused - what would the ants say about that? How can I wash my clothes - why I'd, I'd, I'd be a woman if I did that. No, I'd rather polish my sneakers than that and as for the floor its more creative to paint it then clean it up. As for the dishes I can do that for I am thinking of getting a job in a lunchenette. My life and my room are like two huge bugs following me around the globe. Thank god I have an innocent eye for nature. I was born to remember a song about love - on a hill a butterfly makes a cup that I drink from, walking over a bridge of flowers. Dec. 27th, 1957, Paris

Written by Stephen Dunn | Story A woman's taking her late-afternoon walk on Chestnut where no sidewalk exists and houses with gravel driveways sit back among the pines. Only the house with the vicious dog is close to the road. An electric fence keeps him in check. When she comes to that house, the woman always crosses to the other side. I'm the woman's husband. It's a problem loving your protagonist too much. Soon the dog is going to break through that fence, teeth bared, and go for my wife. She will be helpless. I'm out of town, helpless too. Here comes the dog. What kind of dog? A mad dog, a dog like one of those teenagers who just loses it on the playground, kills a teacher. Something's going to happen that can't happen in a good story: out of nowhere a car comes and kills the dog. The dog flies in the air, lands in a patch of delphiniums. My wife is crying now. The woman who hit the dog has gotten out of her car. She holds both hands to her face. The woman who owns the dog has run out of her house. Three women crying in the street, each for different reasons. All of this is so unlikely; it's as if I've found myself in a country of pure fact, miles from truth's more demanding realm. When I listened to my wife's story on the phone I knew I'd take it from her, tell it every which way until it had an order and a deceptive period at the end. That's what I always do in the face of helplessness, make some arrangements if I can. Praise the odd, serendipitous world. Nothing I'd be inclined to think of would have stopped that dog. Only the facts saved her.

Written by Adrian Green | Mirror There are no lies in the morning no cheating of age an illusion of eye smoothing skin over bone. No portrait hidden away becoming skeletal and demanding release. Another day to face, my confessor, so laugh at this charting of years.

Written by Sylvia Plath | Event How the elements solidify! --- The moonlight, that chalk cliff In whose rift we lie Back to back. I here an owl cry From its cold indigo. Intolerable vowels enter my heart. The child in the white crib revolves and sighs, Opens its mouth now, demanding. His little face is carved in pained, red wood. Then there are the stars - ineradicable, hard. One touch : it burns and sickens. I cannot see your eyes. Where apple bloom ices the night I walk in a ring, A groove of old faults, deep and bitter. Love cannot come here. A black gap discloses itself. On the opposite lip A small white soul is waving, a small white maggot. My limbs, also, have left me. Who has dismembered us? The dark is melting. We touch like cripples.

Written by Dorothy Parker | Daylight Saving My answers are inadequate To those demanding day and date And ever set a tiny shock Through strangers asking what's o'clock; Whose days are spent in whittling rhyme- What's time to her, or she to Time?