Famous Delicacy Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Ode To The Artichoke

by Pablo Neruda
 The artichoke 
With a tender heart 
Dressed up like a warrior, 
Standing at attention, it built 
A small helmet 
Under its scales 
It remained 
Unshakeable, 
By its side 
The crazy vegetables 
Uncurled 
Their tendrills and leaf-crowns, 
Throbbing bulbs, 
In the sub-soil 
The carrot 
With its red mustaches 
Was sleeping, 
The grapevine 
Hung out to dry its branches 
Through which...Read more of this...

Butter

by Connie Wanek
 Butter, like love,
seems common enough
yet has so many imitators.
I held a brick of it, heavy and cool,
and glimpsed what seemed like skin
beneath a corner of its wrap;
the decolletage revealed
a most attractive fat!

And most refined.
Not milk, not cream,
not even creme de la creme.
It was a delicacy which assured me
that bliss follows agitation,
that even pasture daisies
through the alchemy of four stomachs
may...Read more of this...

That One

by Jorge Luis Borges
 Oh days devoted to the useless burden
of putting out of mind the biography
of a minor poet of the Southem Hemisphere,
to whom the fates or perhaps the stars have given
a body which will leave behind no child,
and blindness, which is semi-darkness and jail,
and old age, which is the dawn of death,
and fame, which absolutely nobody deserves,
and the practice of weaving...Read more of this...

Down Wanton Down!

by Robert Graves
 Down, wanton, down! Have you no shame 
That at the whisper of Love's name, 
Or Beauty's, presto! up you raise 
Your angry head and stand at gaze? 

Poor bombard-captain, sworn to reach 
The ravelin and effect a breach-- 
Indifferent what you storm or why, 
So be that in the breach you die! 

Love may be blind, but Love at...Read more of this...

These Green-Going-to-Yellow

by Marvin Bell
 This year,
I'm raising the emotional ante,
putting my face
in the leaves to be stepped on,
seeing myself among them, that is;
that is, likening
leaf-vein to artery, leaf to flesh,
the passage of a leaf in autumn
to the passage of autumn,
branch-tip and winter spaces
to possibilities, and possibility
to God. Even on East 61st Street
in the blowzy city of New York,
someone has planted a gingko
because it...Read more of this...

Calendar of an Invisible April

by Odysseus Elytis
"Calendar of an Invisible April"
Translation from Greek: Marios Dikaiakos


"The wind was wistling continuously, it was 
getting darker, and that distant voice was 
incessantly reaching my ears : "an entire life"...
"an entire life"...
On the opposite wall, the shadows of the 
trees were playing cinema"

----------------


"It seems that somewhere people are celebrating;
although there are no houses or human beings
I can listen to guitars...Read more of this...

Poem (Remember midsummer: the fragrance of box)

by Delmore Schwartz
 Remember midsummer: the fragrance of box, of white
 roses
And of phlox. And upon a honeysuckle branch 
Three snails hanging with infinite delicacy
-- Clinging like tendril, flake and thread, as self-tormented
And self-delighted as any ballerina,
 just as in the orchard,
Near the apple trees, in the over-grown grasses
Drunken wasps clung to over-ripe pears
Which had fallen: swollen and disfigured.
For now it is...Read more of this...

Poems Potatoes

by Sylvia Plath
 The word, defining, muzzles; the drawn line
Ousts mistier peers and thrives, murderous,
In establishments which imagined lines

Can only haunt. Sturdy as potatoes,
Stones, without conscience, word and line endure,
Given an inch. Not that they're gross (although

Afterthought often would have them alter
To delicacy, to poise) but that they
Shortchange me continuously: whether

More or other, they still dissatisfy.
Unpoemed, unpictured, the potato
Bunches its knobby browns...Read more of this...

Dream Song 67: I dont operate often. When I do

by John Berryman
 I don't operate often. When I do,
persons take note.
Nurses look amazed. They pale.
The patient is brought back to life, or so.
The reason I don't do this more (I quote)
is: I have a living to fail-”

because of my wife & son-”to keep from earning.
-”Mr Bones, I sees that.
They for these operations thanks you, what?
not pays you. -”Right.
You have seldom been...Read more of this...

A Supermarket in California

by Allen Ginsberg
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit- 
man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees 
with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. 
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, 
I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of 
your enumerations! 
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole fam- 
ilies shopping at night! Aisles full...Read more of this...

Pureness of pale moon, loneness of far skies

by Hafez
Pureness of pale moon, loneness of far skies,
Splendour of starry regions & bright sun,
Grandeur of universal vastnesses,

Sweetness of flower, staunchness of stalwart tree,
Delicacy of small verdures ev’ry one,
Loveliness of all lowly forms that be,

Gladness of ev’ry bird that gaily sings,
Ardour of eager beasts that hunt & kill,
Rapture of all life-raptur’d living things;

Yea man’s one rapture too & his life’s joy,
His...Read more of this...

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