10 Best Famous Quartet Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Quartet poems. This is a select list of the best famous Quartet poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Quartet poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of quartet poems.

• All Famous Quartet Poems

 IT’S a jazz affair, drum crashes and cornet razzes
The trombone pony neighs and the tuba jackass snorts.
The banjo tickles and titters too awful.
The chippies talk about the funnies in the papers.
 The cartoonists weep in their beer.
 Ship riveters talk with their feet
 To the feet of floozies under the tables.
A quartet of white hopes mourn with interspersed snickers:
 “I got the blues.
 I got the blues.
 I got the blues.”
And … as we said earlier:
 The cartoonists weep in their beer.

 On a day like this the rain comes
down in fat and random drops among
the ailanthus leaves---"the tree
of Heaven"---the leaves that on moon-
lit nights shimmer black and blade-
shaped at this third-floor window.
And there are bunches of small green
knobs, buds, crowded together. The
rapid music fills in the spaces of
the leaves. And the piano comes in,
like an extra heartbeat, dangerous
and lovely. Slower now, less like
the leaves, more like the rain which
almost isn't rain, more like thawed-
out hail. All this beauty in the
mess of this small apartment on
West 20th in Chelsea, New York.
Slowly the notes pour out, slowly,
more slowly still, fat rain falls.

 Come friend, 
I have an old story to tell you—

Listen.
Sit down beside me and listen.
My face is red with sorrow 
and my breasts are made of straw.
I sit in the ladder-back chair
in a corner of the polished stage.
I have forgiven all the old actors for dying.
A new one comes on with the same lines,
like large white growths, in his mouth.
The dancers come on from the wings,
perfectly mated.

I look up. The ceiling is pearly.
My thighs press, knotting in their treasure.
Upstage the bride falls in satin to the floor.
Beside her the tall hero in a red wool robe
stirs the fire with his ivory cane.
The string quartet plays for itself,
gently, gently, sleeves and waxy bows.
The legs of the dancers leap and catch.
I myself have little stiff legs,
my back is as straight as a book
and how I came to this place—
the little feverish roses,
the islands of olives and radishes,
the blissful pastimes of the parlor—
I'll never know.

 I HEARD you, solemn-sweet pipes of the organ, as last Sunday morn I pass’d the
 church; 
Winds of autumn!—as I walk’d the woods at dusk, I heard your long-stretch’d
 sighs, up above, so mournful; 
I heard the perfect Italian tenor, singing at the opera—I heard the soprano in the
 midst of the quartet singing; 
... Heart of my love!—you too I heard, murmuring low, through one of the wrists
 around my head; 
Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last night under my
 ear. 5