Famous Criticism Poems by Famous Poets

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

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On The Borders

by Les Murray
 We're driving across tableland
somewhere in the world;
it is almost bare of trees.

Upland near void of features
always moves me, but not to thought;
it lets me rest from thinking.

I feel no need to interpret it
as if it were art. Too much
of poetry is criticism now.

That hawk, clinging to
the eaves of the wind, beating
its third wing, its tail

isn't mine to sell. And...Read more of this...

On The Critical Attitude

by Bertolt Brecht
 The critical attitude
Strikes many people as unfruitful
That is because they find the state
Impervious to their criticism
But what in this case is an unfruitful attitude
Is merely a feeble attitude. Give criticism arms
And states can be demolished by it.

Canalising a river
Grafting a fruit tree
Educating a person
Transforming a state
These are instances of fruitful criticism
And at the same time instances of art....Read more of this...

Proclamation Without Pretension

by Tristan Tzara
 Art is going to sleep for a new world to be born
"ART"-parrot word-replaced by DADA,
PLESIOSAURUS, or handkerchief

The talent THAT CAN BE LEARNED makes the
poet a druggist TODAY the criticism
of balances no longer challenges with resemblances

Hypertrophic painters hyperaes-
theticized and hypnotized by the hyacinths
of the hypocritical-looking muezzins

CONSOLIDATE THE HARVEST OF EX-
ACT CALCULATIONS

Hypodrome of immortal guarantees: there is
no such thing as importance...Read more of this...

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

by Adrienne Rich
 My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.
Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.

They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.

I want you to see this before I leave:
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus that said:
my bleeding is under control

A red plant...Read more of this...

Says

by Walt Whitman
 1
I SAY whatever tastes sweet to the most perfect person, that is finally right. 
2
I say nourish a great intellect, a great brain; 
If I have said anything to the contrary, I hereby retract it. 

3
I say man shall not hold property in man; 
I say the least developed person on earth is just as important and sacred to...Read more of this...

Phantasmagoria CANTO III ( Scarmoges )

by Lewis Carroll
 "AND did you really walk," said I,
"On such a wretched night?
I always fancied Ghosts could fly -
If not exactly in the sky,
Yet at a fairish height." 

"It's very well," said he, "for Kings
To soar above the earth:
But Phantoms often find that wings -
Like many other pleasant things -
Cost more than they are worth. 

"Spectres of course are rich, and...Read more of this...

The Respectable Burgher on The Higher Criticism

by Thomas Hardy
 Since Reverend Doctors now declare 
That clerks and people must prepare 
To doubt if Adam ever were; 
To hold the flood a local scare; 
To argue, though the stolid stare, 
That everything had happened ere 
The prophets to its happening sware; 
That David was no giant-slayer, 
Nor one to call a God-obeyer 
In certain details we could spare, 
But...Read more of this...

The Dover Bitch: A Criticism Of Life

by Anthony Hecht
 So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, "Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc."
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to...Read more of this...

Oxford Anthology Of Twentieth Century Poetry'

by Barry Tebb
 To Simon Jenner



NO ARMITAGE (I’d like to see his rage)

NO DUHIG (one dig long overdue)

NO GREENLAW (M & S might sue)

NO IMLAH (ditto the TLS)

NO CRICHTON SMITH or JAMIE

(Tuma’s not haggis-crazy)

NO CONSTANTINE (who’ll miss his donnish whine?)

NO LONGLEY (the QMP tick didn’t do the trick)

NO PORTER (long overdue for slaughter)

NO MAXWELL, MORRISON or MOTION

(to miss that lot I’d swim...Read more of this...

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