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Famous Collapses Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Carroll, Jim
...s of brilliant notes
Pressing in...
Pressure
That's how diamonds are made
And that's WHERE it sometimes all collapses
Down in on you

5/
Then I translated your muttered lyrics
And the phrases were curious:
Like "incognito libido"
And "Chalk Skin Bending"

The words kept getting smaller and smaller
Until
Separated from their music
Each letter spilled out into a cartridge
Which fit only in the barrel of a gun

6/
And you shoved the barrel in as far as possible
Becau...Read more of this...



by Crane, Hart
...chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and que...Read more of this...

by Harjo, Joy
...ard secretly bought the beauty a drink.

How do I say it?In this language there are no words for how the real world
collapses.I could say it in my own and the sacred mounds would come into 
focus, but I couldn't take it in this dingy envelope.So I look at the stars in 
this strange city, frozen to the back of the sky, the only promises that ever
make sense.

My brother-in-law hung out with white people, went to law school with a
perfect record, quit.Says y...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...e
does tourist greed embroil us in
or shelter us from guilt

backstreet
a sailor drunk
gyrates within a wall of adenese
collapses spews
they roll about him
in a dark pool

the sun moves off
as we do

streets squashed with shops
criss-cross of customers
a rush of people nightwards
a white woman
striding like a cliff
dirt - goats in the gutter
crunched beggars
a small to breed a fungus
cafes with open mouths
men like broken teeth
or way back in the dark
like tonsils

an air of ...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...man beside the road like a red mitten. 

There's a sack over my head. 
I can't see. I'm blind. 
The sea collapses. 
The sun is a bone. 
Hi-ho the derry-o, 
we all fall down. 
If I were a fisherman I could comprehend. 
They fish right through the door 
and pull eyes from the fire. 
They rock upon the daybreak 
and amputate the waters. 
They are beating the sea, 
they are hurting it, 
delving down into the inscrutable salt. 

* 

When...Read more of this...



by Sexton, Anne
...en,
throwing it, throwing it at the shore.
You say it is angry.
I say it is like a kicked Madonna.
Its womb collapses, drunk with its fever.
We breathe in its fury.

I, the inlander,
am here with you for just a small space.
I am almost afraid,
so long gone from the sea.
I have seen her smooth as a cheek.
I have seen her easy,
doing her business,
lapping in.
I have seen her rolling her hoops of blue.
I have seen her tear the land off.Read more of this...

by Lorde, Audre
...Time collapses between the lips of strangers
my days collapse into a hollow tube 
soon implodes against now
like an iron wall
my eyes are blocked with rubble 
a smear of perspectives
blurring each horizon 
in the breathless precision of silence
One word is made.

Once the renegade flesh was gone
fall air lay against my face 
sharp and blue as a needle
but the...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...s not wait at the end to
 arrest it, 
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward—nothing collapses; 
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. 

7
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? 
I hasten to inform him or her, it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. 

I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and am not
 contain’d between my hat and boots;
And peruse manifold objects, n...Read more of this...

by Herbert, George
...over the breakwater,
The flat boom on the beach of the towering sea-swell,
The sudden shudder as the jutting sea-cliff collapses,
And the hurricane drives the dead straw into the living pine-tree....Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...you are now.
Fire in the forest! Burn in blue crosses.
Burn, burn, flame up, sparkle in trees of light.

It collapses, crackling. Fire. Fire. 
And my soul dances, seared with curls of fire. 
Who calls? What silence peopled with echoes?
Hour of nostalgia, hour of happiness, hour of solitude. 
Hour that is mine from among them all!
Megaphone in which the wind passes singing.
Such a passion of weeping tied to my body.

Shaking of all the r...Read more of this...

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