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Famous Clarity Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Belieu, Erin
...her beautiful woman holding
the color of expensive sapphires
against her throat, I'll never know.
It is an ordinary clarity.

 So then was it music?
 Something like love or
 words, a sentimental moment once
 years ago, that blue sky?

How soon the sky and I have grown apart.
On the postcard, an old man hangs
half-dead, strung over his instrument, and what
I have imagined is half-dead, too. Our bones
end hollow, sky blue; the flute comes untuned....Read more of this...



by Bowers, Edgar
...ve is no more.
It died as the mind dies: the pure desire
Relinquishing the blissful form it wore,
The ample joy and clarity expire.

Regret is vain.
Then do not grieve for what you would efface,
The sudden failure of the past, the pain
Of its unwilling change, and the disgrace.

Leave innocence,
And modify your nature by the grief
Which poses to the will indifference
That no desire is permanent in sense.

Take leave of me.
What recompense, or pity, or ...Read more of this...

by Blackburn, Thomas
...t is some hard dry scale we must break through,
A deadness round the life. I cannot make
That pebble shine. Its clarity must take
Sunlight unto itself and prove it true.
It is our childishness that clutters up
With scales out of the past a present speech,
So that the sun's white finger cannot reach
An adult prism.'
 'Will they never stop,
Your words?' she said and settled to the dark.

'But we use words, we cannot grunt or bark,
Use any surer means to make...Read more of this...

by Reeser, Jennifer
...ingers countless times from hip to hem –
Anastasia, whereas I am anyone
in tan, beside a jade and garnet gem.

With clarity and ease like these a-stage,
comparison with any else in life
seems but the smart annoyance of an age,
scissors beside a blunted paperknife.

“Sit up. Pay close attention. Sugar Plum
is dancing with such dignity,” I tell
you, half-disheartened, when I hear you hum,
you know Tchaikovsky’s symphony so well....Read more of this...

by Piutti, Anna
...Was I thinking so loudly?

A heart absorbs the absurd
on a regular basis.

Primordial fears and poisoned
skies are

stage smoke;

but fragrant whispers from
your skin are 

open windows
on relief.

And I see,
and I laugh:

I 
know
nothing.


Copyright ©2006 Anna Piutti....Read more of this...



by Gregory, Rg
...amongst those who grasped a notion of their girth
not one could get the fullest beatings of these sun-drums
the simple clarity the dreams had turned opaque

and after thirty years (too frayed to fight such dearth)
who should know better (so much beaten by life’s tantrums)
i believe in flower-power (the triumph of the meek)...Read more of this...

by Berry, Wendell
...will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
"I am not ashamed." A sure horizon
will come around you. The heron will begin
his evening flight from the hilltop....Read more of this...

by Jong, Erica
...sparency,
clear water gleaming
under a covered bridge. . .
I love his spiritual sister
because she snatched clarity
from her murky history.

Tormented New Yorkers both,
but she journeyed
to the heart of light--
did he?

She took her friends on one last voyage,
through the isles of Greece
on a yacht chartered with her royalties--
a rich girl proud to be making her own money.

The light of the Middle Sea
was what she sought.
All denizens
of this demonic ...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...died to know --
The menstruum that dissolves all matter -- thou
Hast found it: for this silence, filling now
The globed clarity of receiving space,
This solves us all: man, matter, doubt, disgrace,
Death, love, sin, sanity,
Must in yon silence' clear solution lie.
Too clear! That crystal nothing who'll peruse?
The blackest night could bring us brighter news.
Yet precious qualities of silence haunt
Round these vast margins, ministrant.
Oh, if thy soul's at latter g...Read more of this...

by Troupe, Quincy
...es through smoke, where do the symbols they carry
stop everything, put down roots, cleanse themselves of everything
but clarity —— though here eye might be asking a little too much of any
poet's head, full as it were with double-entendres...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...It seems these poets have nothing
up their ample sleeves
they turn over so many cards so early,
telling us before the first line
whether it is wet or dry,
night or day, the season the man is standing in,
even how much he has had to drink.

Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow.
Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name.

"...Read more of this...

by Lehman, David
...ill, sometimes I wonder and, wondering, find
the path of least resistance, the earth's orbit
around the sun's delirious clarity. Once you sniff
the aphrodisiac of disaster, you know: there's no reason
for the anxiety--or for expecting to be free of it;
try telling Franz Kafka he has no reason to feel guilty;
or so I say to well-meaning mongers of common sense.
They way I figure, you start with the names
which are keys and then you throw them away
and learn to love the...Read more of this...

by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)
...familiar wind—

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

One by one objects are defined—
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance—Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken...Read more of this...

by Nemerov, Howard
...ething... the dry grass bent under the pane
Brimful of bouncing water... something of
A swaying clarity which blindly echoes
This lonely afternoon of memories
And missed desires, while the wintry rain
(Unspeakable, the distance in the mind!)
Runs on the standing windows and away....Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...l in the convent tower swung.
High overhead the great sun hung,
A navel for the curving sky.
The air was a blue clarity.
Swallows flew,
And a cock crew.
The iron clanging sank through the light air,
Rustled over with blowing branches. A flare
Of spotted green, and a snake had gone
Into the bed where the snowdrops shone
In green new-started,
Their white bells parted.
Two by two, in a long brown line,
The nuns were walking to breathe the fine
Bright Apri...Read more of this...

by Doty, Mark
...ograph, without strain?

So when I saw your unguarded, reliable face,
your unmistakable gaze opening all the warmth
and clarity of you—warm brown tea—we held
each other for the time the dream allowed.

Bless you. You came back so I could see you
once more, plainly, so I could rest against you
without thinking this happiness lessened anything,
without thinking you were alive again....Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...rds how could I 
 report the imperfect failure 
 for which I began to die? 

 I might begin by saying 
 that it was for clarity, 
 though I did not find it in 
 terror: dubiously 
 entered each act, unsure 
 of who I was and what I 
 did, touching my face for fear 
 I was another inside 

 my head I played back pictures 
 of my childhood, of my wife 
 even, for it was in her 
 I found myself beaten, safe, 
 and furthest from the present. 
 It is her face I see now 
 thoug...Read more of this...

by Eluard, Paul
...s a man of it 

Presesence is my virtue in each visible hand 
Only death is solitude 
From delight to fury from fury to clarity 
I make myself whole through all beings 
Through all weather on the earth and in the clouds 
Through the passing seasons I am young 
And strong for having lived 
I am young my blood rises over my ruins 

We have our hands to entwine Nothing can ever seduce better 
Tahn our bonding to each other a forest 
Returning earth to sky and the sky to night 

...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...remnants and qual-
ities for me to use--my words piled up, my texts, my 
manuscripts, my loves.
 I had a moment of clarity, saw the feeling in
the heart of things, walked out to the garden crying.
 Saw the red blossoms in the night light, sun's 
gone, they had all grown, in a moment, and were wait-
ing stopped in time for the day sun to come and give
them...
 Flowers which as in a dream at sunset I watered
faithfully not knowing how much I loved them....Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...ed me everywhere:
Dismayed I put my specs away,--
 Such truth I could not bear.

And now I do not want to see
 With clarity of view;
For while there's heaven hell may be
 More tragically true:
Though dim may be Reality,
 Sheer love shines through....Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Clarity poems.


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