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Famous Complicated Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Tebb, Barry
...and but I can’t face the journey to a far off foreign land.



Sorry James Kirkup, your Andorran niche

Is just too complicated for me to ever reach.

Apologies especially to Emily Bronte’s ghost -

You are the mostest hostess that I could ever boast

Your heather moor and cobbled street’s allure

Are something I’ve put off until the braw New Year....Read more of this...



by Berryman, John
...d grateful for that bounty, for bright whims
of heavy mind across the tiresome world 
which the tiresome world debated, complicated....Read more of this...

by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...ook some risk
or other for a promise.

Let's not forget the music, either,
that soon had hauled him 
toward absence complicated
by an overflowing heart.......Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...if you turn away
because there is no lesson here
I will hold my awkward bowl,
with all its cracked stars shining
like a complicated lie,
and fasten a new skin around it
as if I were dressing an orange
or a strange sun.
Not that it was beautiful,
but that I found some order there.
There ought to be something special
for someone
in this kind of hope.
This is something I would never find
in a lovelier place, my dear,
although your fear is anyone's fear,
like an invis...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ot our business.

 Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is...Read more of this...



by Carroll, Lewis
...

But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid. 

This he perched upon a tripod -
Crouched beneath its dusky cover -
Stretched his hand, enforcing silence -
Said, "Be motionless, I beg you!"
Mystic, awful was the process. 

All the family in order
Sat before him for their pictures:
Each in turn, as he was taken,
Volunteered his own suggestions,
His ...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...ut he opened out the hinges, 
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges, 
Till it looked all squares and oblongs, 
Like a complicated figure 
In the Second Book of Euclid. 

This he perched upon a tripod - 
Crouched beneath its dusky cover - 
Stretched his hand, enforcing silence - 
Said "Be motionless, I beg you!" 
Mystic, awful was the process. 


All the family in order 
Sat before him for their pictures: 
Each in turn, as he was taken, 
Volunteered his own suggestio...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...

But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid. 

This he perched upon a tripod -
Crouched beneath its dusky cover -
Stretched his hand, enforcing silence -
Said, "Be motionless, I beg you!"
Mystic, awful was the process. 

All the family in order
Sat before him for their pictures:
Each in turn, as he was taken,
Volunteered his own suggestions,
His ...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...cavity!"--but he's a mile away.
You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macacity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibit, or one or two to spare:
And whatever time the deed took place--MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I mi...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ents all, as accessories 
To his bold riot: Dreadful was the din 
Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now 
With complicated monsters head and tail, 
Scorpion, and Asp, and Amphisbaena dire, 
Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear, 
And Dipsas; (not so thick swarmed once the soil 
Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the isle 
Ophiusa,) but still greatest he the midst, 
Now Dragon grown, larger than whom the sun 
Ingendered in the Pythian vale or slime, 
Huge Python, and...Read more of this...

by Stojanovic, Dejan
...The most complicated skill 
Is to be simple. 

To say more while saying less 
Is the secret of being simple. 

To not say all that can be said 
Is the secret of discipline and economy. 

To leave out beautiful sunsets 
Is the secret of good taste. 

To hide feelings when you are near crying 
Is the secret of dignity. 

To cut and ti...Read more of this...

by Turner Smith, Charlotte
...o memorial shall remain of me,
Save in your bosoms; while even your regret
Shall lose its poignancy, as ye reflect
What complicated woes that grave conceals!
But, if the little praise, that may await
The Mother's efforts, should provoke the spleen
Of Priest or Levite; and they then arraign
The dust that cannot hear them; be it yours
To vindicate my humble fame; to say,
That, not in selfish sufferings absorb'd,
"I gave to misery all I had, my tears 8 ."
And if, where regul...Read more of this...

by Simic, Charles
...>

The city like a huge cinema
With lights dimmed.
The performance already started.

So many blurred faces in a complicated plot.

The great secret which kept eluding me: knowing who I am . . .

The Redeemer and the Virgin,
Their eyes wide open in the empty church
Where the killer came to hide himself . . .

The new snow on the sidewalk bore footprints
That could have been made by bare feet.
Some unknown penitent guiding me.
In trut...Read more of this...

by Ayres, Pam
...You know this world is complicated, imperfect and oppressed
And it’s not hard to feel timid, apprehensive and depressed.
It seems that all around us tides of questions ebb and flow
And people want solutions but they don’t know where to go.

Opinions abound but who is wrong and who is right.
People need a prophet, a diffuser of the light.
Someone they can turn to as the cris...Read more of this...

by Graham, Jorie
...d there exists another death in regards to which

we are not immortal

variegated dappled spangled intricately wrought

complicated obstruse subtle devious 

scintillating with change and ambiguity



 Summer

Explain two are

Explain not one

(in theory) (and in practice)

blurry, my love, like a right quotation,

wanting so to sink back down,

you washing me in soil now, my shoulders dust, my rippling dust,

Look I'll scrub the dirt listen.

Up here how will I

(not) ho...Read more of this...

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