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Best Famous Dictionary Poems

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

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Written by Les Murray | Create an image from this poem

The New Hieroglyphics

 In the World language, sometimes called
Airport Road, a thinks balloon with a gondola
under it is a symbol for speculation.

Thumbs down to ear and tongue:
World can be written and read, even painted
but not spoken. People use their own words.

Latin letters are in it for names, for e.g.
OK and H2S O4, for musical notes,
but mostly it's diagrams: skirt-figure, trousered figure

have escaped their toilet doors. I (that is, saya,
Ego, watashji wa) am two eyes without pupils;
those aren't seen when you look out through them.

You has both pupils, we has one, and one blank.
Good is thumbs up, thumb and finger zipping lips 
is confidential. Evil is three-cornered snake eyes.

The effort is always to make the symbols obvious:
the bolt of electricity, winged stethoscope of course
for flying doctor. Prams under fire? Soviet film industry.

Pictographs also shouldn't be too culture-bound:
A heart circled and crossed out surely isn't.
For red, betel spit lost out to ace of diamonds.

Black is the ace of spades. The kind of spades
reads Union boss, the two is feeble effort.
If is the shorthand Libra sing , the scales.

Spare literal pictures render most nouns and verbs
and computers can draw them faster than Pharaoh's scribes.
A bordello prospectus is as explicit as the action,

but everywhere there's sunflower talk, i.e.
metaphor, as we've seen. A figure riding a skyhook
bearing food in one hand is the pictograph for grace,

two animals in a book read Nature, two books
Inside an animal, instinct. Rice in bowl with chopsticks
denotes food. Figure 1 lying prone equals other.

Most emotions are mini-faces, and the speech 
balloon is ubiquitous. A bull inside one is dialect
for placards inside one. Sun and moon together

inside one is poetry. Sun and moon over palette,
over shoes etc are all art forms — but above
a cracked heart and champagne glass? Riddle that

and you're starting to think in World, whose grammar 
is Chinese-terse and fluid. Who needs the square-
equals-diamond book, the dictionary,to know figures

led by strings to their genitals mean fashion?
just as a skirt beneath a circle meanas demure
or ao similar circle shouldering two arrows is macho.

All peoples are at times cat in water with this language
but it does promote international bird on shoulder.
This foretaste now lays its knife and fork parallel.


Written by Chris Mansell | Create an image from this poem

The unquiet city

 we are succulents
our cool jade arms open
over clean tables our fine bone
china minds pull the strings
of our tongues together we plait
our thoughts with the television
back through the aerials and
transmission towers prodding
through the literal fog
the mechanics of which distance
does not startle us or the ears
pretend to hear the telephone
the page also wearies
us we have taken the meaning
out of things by laying them face to
face in our dictionary of emotions
we are so entirely alone that we
are unaware of it
and we enjoy the religion of solitude
because religions are at base
meaningless and we can turn
from them to a new hobby
to clean ashtrays or emptier
whiskey glasses we the women
of our building Margaret Gladys
Cecily Ida Eileen and I have
the cleanest washing on our block
we are proud and air our sheets
although it's a long time since
any serious stain or passionate figment
seeped through that censorious cloth
we have plants one of us has a budgie
and I have three fish the details
are unimportant God does not come here often
we would be suspicious if he
did without an identity card
we collect each others' mail
remind each other of garbage
days and are frightened
of the louts from the skating rink
but in the night I leave
my curtains open and air
my pendant tremulous breasts
Written by Edward Taylor | Create an image from this poem

Shut Up And Eat Your Toad

 The disorganization to which I currently belong
has skipped several meetings in a row
which is a pattern I find almost fatally attractive.
Down at headquarters there's a secretary
and a janitor who I shall call Suzie
and boy can she ever shoot straight.
She'll shoot you straight in the eye if you ask her to.
I mow the grass every other Saturday
and that's the day she polishes the trivets
whether they need it or not, I don't know
if there is a name for this kind of behavior,
hers or mine, but somebody once said something or another.
That's why I joined up in the first place,
so somebody could teach me a few useful phrases,
such as, "Good afternoon, my dear ****-retentive Doctor,"
and "My, that is a lovely dictionary you have on, Mrs. Smith." 
Still, I hardly feel like functioning even on a brute
or loutish level. My plants think I'm one of them,
and they don't look so good themselves, or so
I tell them. I like to give them at least several
reasons to be annoyed with me, it's how they exercise
their skinny spectrum of emotions. Because.
That and cribbage. Often when I return from the club
late at night, weary-laden, weary-winged, washed out,
I can actually hear the nematodes working, sucking
the juices from the living cells of my narcissus.
I have mentioned this to Suzie on several occasions.
Each time she has backed away from me, panic-stricken
when really I was just making a stab at conversation.
It is not my intention to alarm anyone, but dear Lord
if I find a dead man in the road and his eyes
are crawling with maggots, I refuse to say
have a nice day Suzie just because she's desperate
and her life is a runaway carriage rushing toward a cliff
now can I? Would you let her get away with that kind of crap?
Who are you anyway? And what kind of disorganization is this?
Baron of the Holy Grail? Well it's about time you got here.
I was worried, I was starting to fret.
Written by Charles Simic | Create an image from this poem

Private Eye

 To find clues where there are none,
That's my job now, I said to the
Dictionary on my desk. The world beyond
My window has grown illegible,
And so has the clock on the wall.
I may strike a match to orient myself

In the meantime, there's the heart
Stopping hush as the building
Empties, the elevators stop running,
The grains of dust stay put.
Hours of quiescent sleuthing
Before the Madonna with the mop

Shuffles down the long corridor
Trying doorknobs, turning mine.
That's just little old me sweating
In the customer's chair, I'll say.
Keep your nose out of it.
I'm not closing up till he breaks.
Written by Yehuda Amichai | Create an image from this poem

God Full Of Mercy

 God-Full-of-Mercy, the prayer for the dead.
If God was not full of mercy,
Mercy would have been in the world,
Not just in Him.
I, who plucked flowers in the hills
And looked down into all the valleys,
I, who brought corpses down from the hills,
Can tell you that the world is empty of mercy.
I, who was King of Salt at the seashore,
Who stood without a decision at my window,
Who counted the steps of angels,
Whose heart lifted weights of anguish
In the horrible contests.

I, who use only a small part
Of the words in the dictionary.

I, who must decipher riddles
I don't want to decipher,
Know that if not for the God-full-of-mercy
There would be mercy in the world,
Not just in Him.


Written by James Tate | Create an image from this poem

Shut Up And Eat Your Toad

 The disorganization to which I currently belong
has skipped several meetings in a row
which is a pattern I find almost fatally attractive.
Down at headquarters there's a secretary
and a janitor who I shall call Suzie
and boy can she ever shoot straight.
She'll shoot you straight in the eye if you ask her to.
I mow the grass every other Saturday
and that's the day she polishes the trivets
whether they need it or not, I don't know
if there is a name for this kind of behavior,
hers or mine, but somebody once said something or another.
That's why I joined up in the first place,
so somebody could teach me a few useful phrases,
such as, "Good afternoon, my dear ****-retentive Doctor,"
and "My, that is a lovely dictionary you have on, Mrs. Smith." 
Still, I hardly feel like functioning even on a brute
or loutish level. My plants think I'm one of them,
and they don't look so good themselves, or so
I tell them. I like to give them at least several
reasons to be annoyed with me, it's how they exercise
their skinny spectrum of emotions. Because.
That and cribbage. Often when I return from the club
late at night, weary-laden, weary-winged, washed out,
I can actually hear the nematodes working, sucking
the juices from the living cells of my narcissus.
I have mentioned this to Suzie on several occasions.
Each time she has backed away from me, panic-stricken
when really I was just making a stab at conversation.
It is not my intention to alarm anyone, but dear Lord
if I find a dead man in the road and his eyes
are crawling with maggots, I refuse to say
have a nice day Suzie just because she's desperate
and her life is a runaway carriage rushing toward a cliff
now can I? Would you let her get away with that kind of crap?
Who are you anyway? And what kind of disorganization is this?
Baron of the Holy Grail? Well it's about time you got here.
I was worried, I was starting to fret.
Written by Ellis Parker Butler | Create an image from this poem

Djolan

 Soft was the night, the eve how airy,
When through the big, fat dictionary
I wandered on in careless ease,
And read the a's, b's, c's and d's!

But stop! What is this form I see,
Beginning with a hump-backed d?
I pause! I gasp! I falter there!
It is the djolan, I declare!

It is the djolan, wond'rous word!
The Buceros plicatus bird!
Ne'er, ne'er before had I the bliss
To meet a djolly word like this!

'Twas djust before my dinner hour --
Well, let the djuicy djoint go sour!
Djoyful I read. I djust must see
What this strange djolan word may be!

Ah! ha! It is a noun! A noun!
(A ''name word" as we say in town)
"E. Ind. The native name of the
Year bird." These are the words I see.

"A hornbill with a white tail and --"
The big book trembles in my hand --
"-- plicated membrane at the base --"
Ah, well-a-day! If that's the case!

"-- base of the beak, inhabiting --"
Oh! dictionary, wond'rous thing!
"-- the Sunda Islands ----" Where would we
Without our dictionary be?

"-- Malacca, e-t-c." That's all!
I let the dictionary fall.
I am replete. All is explained.
Knowledge (it's power) is what I've gained!

Soft was the night, the eve how airy,
I read no more the dictionary,
But Oh! and Oh! my heart was stirred
To learn the djolan was a bird!
Written by Dejan Stojanovic | Create an image from this poem

Dictionary of Sounds

Born from the natural attraction
Of vowels and consonants
Alliterating or merging into a fugue

Of sounds flowing 
From the fountain of language.
Meanings embodied 

In blasts of thunder, chirping, blowing; 
Sounds becoming meanings
In, for, and of themselves; 

A huge dictionary of sounds
Craving to be recognized and translated
Either into language or into understanding. 
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

Words

 If on isle of the sea
 I have to tarry,
With one book, let it be
 A Dictionary.
For though I love life's scene,
 It seems absurd,
My greatest joy has been
 The printed word.

Though painter with delight
 May colours blend,
They are but in his sight
 Means to an end.
Yet while I harmonise
 Or pattern them,
A precious word I prize
 Like to a gem.

A fiddler lures fine tone
 From gut and wood;
A sculptor from stark stone
 Shapes godlihood.
But let me just caress,
 Like silver birds,
For their own loveliness--
 Bewitching words.
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

The Artist

 All day with brow of anxious thought
 The dictionary through,
Amid a million words he sought
 The sole one that would do.
He wandered on from pub to pub
 Yet never ceased to seek
With burning brain and pencil stub
 The Word Unique.

Said he: 'I'll nail it down or die.
 Oh Heaven help me, pray!'
And then a heavy car dashed by,
 And he was in the way.
They rushed him to the hospital,
 And though his chance was bleak,
He cried: 'I'll croak, but find I shall
 The Word Unique.'

They reckoned he was off his head,
 And could be it was so;
For as they bent above his bed
 He mumbled soft and low.
And then a name they heard him speak,
 Yet did not deem it odd . . .
At last he'd found the Word Unique,--
 Just God.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things