Famous Contemporary Poems by Famous Poets

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

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So Far and So Far and on Toward the End

by Walt Whitman
 SO far, and so far, and on toward the end, 
Singing what is sung in this book, from the irresistible impulses of me; 
But whether I continue beyond this book, to maturity, 
Whether I shall dart forth the true rays, the ones that wait unfired, 
(Did you think the sun was shining its brightest?
No—it has not yet fully risen;)...Read more of this...

To a Contemporary Bunkshooter

by Carl Sandburg
 YOU come along. . . tearing your shirt. . . yelling about
Jesus.
Where do you get that stuff?
What do you know about Jesus?
Jesus had a way of talking soft and outside of a few
bankers and higher-ups among the con men of Jerusalem
everybody liked to have this Jesus around because
he never made any fake passes and everything
he said went and he...Read more of this...

In Harm's Way

by Barry Tebb
 I was never a film buff, give me Widmark and Wayne any day

Saturday matin?es with Margaret Gardener still hold sway

As my memory veers backwards this temperate Boxing Day-

Westerns and war films and a blurred Maigret,

Coupled with a worn-out sixties Penguin Mallarm?-

How about that mix for a character trait?

Try as I may I can’t get my head round the manifold...Read more of this...

John Hancock Otis

by Edgar Lee Masters
 As to democracy, fellow citizens,
Are you not prepared to admit
That I, who inherited riches and was to the manor born,
Was second to none in Spoon River
In my devotion to the cause of Liberty?
While my contemporary, Anthony Findlay,
Born in a shanty and beginning life
As a water carrier to the section hands,
Then becoming a section hand when he was grown,
Afterwards foreman...Read more of this...

Sunt Leones

by Stevie Smith
 The lions who ate the Christians on the sands of the arena
By indulging native appetites played was now been seen a
Not entirely negligible part
In consolidating at the very start
The position of the Early Christian Church.
Initiatory rights are always bloody
In the lions, it appears
From contemporary art, made a study
Of dyeing Coliseum sands a ruddy
Liturgically sacrificial hue
And if the Christians felt...Read more of this...

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