Famous Delete Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Ode of Ricardo Reis

by Fernando Pessoa
To be great, be whole: nothing
Yours exaggerate nor delete.

Be whole  at everything. Be yourself
at the little things you do.

So that in each lake the whole moon
Shines because high it lives....Read more of this...

eight roundels

by Rg Gregory
 (roundel: variation of the rondeau
consisting of three stanzas of three
lines each, linked together with but
two rhymes and a refrain at the end
of the first and third group)



1.
the blind rose

today's fullness is tomorrow's gone
(the next day after no one knows)
last year's dream now feeds upon
 what blindly grows

imagine if you like a rose
on which no likely sun has shone
a darkness...Read more of this...

The Riddle

by Richard Wilbur
 Shall I love God for causing me to be?
I was mere utterance; shall these words love me?

Yet when I caused His work to jar and stammer,
And one free subject loosened all His grammar,

I love Him that He did not in a rage
Once and forever rule me off the page,

But, thinking I might come to please Him yet,
Crossed out 'delete'...Read more of this...

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