Famous Detail Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Detail poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous detail poems. These examples illustrate what a famous detail poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Friedrich von Schiller
Full many a shining wit one sees,
With tongue on all things well conversing;
The what can charm, the what can please,
In every nice detail rehearsing.
Their raptures so transport the college,
It seems one honeymoon of knowledge.
Yet out they go in silence where
They whilom held their learned prate;
Ah! he who would achieve the fair,
Or sow the embryo of the great,
Must hoard--to wait...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
VI. ? TO ALCHEMISTS. If all you boast of your great art be true ; Sure, willing poverty lives most in you. Adriaen Jansz van Ostade. Alchemist. 1661. [detail]
Adriaen Jansz van Ostade. Alchemist. 1661. [detail]...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Twas in the month of October, and in the year of 1899,
Which the Boers will remember for a very long time,
Because by the British Army they received a crushing blow;
And were driven from Smith's Hill at the Battle of Glencoe.
The Boers' plan of the battle was devised with great skill,
And about 7000 men of them were camped on...Read more of this...
by
Carolyn Kizer
For Ann London
As you described your mastectomy in calm detail
and bared your chest so I might see
the puckered scar,
"They took a hatchet to your breast!" I said. "What an
Amazon you are."
When we were girls we climbed Mt. Tamalpais
chewing bay leaves we had plucked
along the way;
we got high all right, from animal pleasure in each other,
shouting to the sky.
On...Read more of this...
by
Catherine Anderson
I was in love with anatomy
the symmetry of my body
poised for flight,
the heights it would take
over parents, lovers, a keen
riding over truth and detail.
I thought growing up would be
this rising from everything
old and earthly,
not these faltering steps out the door
every day, then back again....Read more of this...
by
Sasha Skenderija
Deep and unreachable in their darknesses,
capriciously childish and tender
when we write to each other,
while we talk about one of us
who is not around.
I grew up with some of them,
others, who I met as grown-up people,
I could unerringly pick out in their photo albums
on group pictures of their school classes.
They've always been like that.
They remember every detail I've...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
On March 1, 1958, four deserters from the French Army of North Africa,
August Rein, Henri Bruette, Jack Dauville, & Thomas Delain, robbed a
government pay station at Orleansville. Because of the subsequent
confession of Dauville the other three were captured or shot. Dauville
was given his freedom and returned to the land of his birth, the U.S.A.
AUGUST REIN:...Read more of this...
by
T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
I
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage...Read more of this...
by
Margaret Atwood
In the burned house I am eating breakfast.
You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,
yet here I am.
The spoon which was melted scrapes against
the bowl which was melted also.
No one else is around.
Where have they gone to, brother and sister,
mother and father? Off along the shore,
perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers,
their dishes piled beside...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
All thy secrets are known to the wisdom of Heaven
[God]· He knows them hair by hair and vein by vein.
I admit that by power of hypocrisy you may be able
to deceive men, but what will you do before Him who
knows your misdeeds one by one in every detail?...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
v.5-10
L. M.
Christ our sacrifice.
The wonders, Lord, thy love has wrought,
Exceed our praise, surmount our thought;
Should I attempt the long detail,
My speech would faint, my numbers fail,
No blood of beasts on altars spilt
Can cleanse the souls of men from guilt;
But thou hast set before our eyes
An all-sufficient sacrifice.
Lo! thine eternal Son appears,
To thy designs he bows his ears,
Assumes a...Read more of this...
by
Philip Larkin
At once whatever happened starts receding.
Panting, and back on board, we line the rail
With trousers ripped, light wallets, and lips bleeding.
Yes, gone, thank God! Remembering each detail
We toss for half the night, but find next day
All's kodak-distant. Easily, then (though pale),
'Perspective brings significance,' we say,
Unhooding our photometers, and, snap!
What can't be printed can be thrown away.
Later, it's just a...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
Down south there is a curio-shop
Unknown to many men;
Thereat do I intend to stop
When I am south again;
The narrow street through which to go--
Aha! I know it well!
And may be you would like to know--
But no--I will not tell!
'T is there to find the loveliest plates
(The bluest of the blue!)
At such surprisingly low rates
You'd not believe it true!
And there...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
IN Tarbolton, ye ken, there are proper young men,
And proper young lasses and a’, man;
But ken ye the Ronalds that live in the Bennals,
They carry the gree frae them a’, man.
Their father’s laird, and weel he can spare’t,
Braid money to tocher them a’, man;
To proper young men, he’ll clink in the hand
Gowd guineas a hunder...Read more of this...
by
Les Murray
Uphill in Melbourne on a beautiful day
a woman is walking ahead of her hair.
Like teak oiled soft to fracture and sway
it hung to her heels and seconded her
as a pencilled retinue, an unscrolling title
to ploughland, edged with ripe rows of dress,
a sheathed wing that couldn't fly her at all,
only itself, loosely, and her spirits.
A largesse
of life and...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
(Mobile Columns of the Boer War)
Out o' the wilderness, dusty an' dry
(Time, an' 'igh time to be trekkin' again!)
Oo is it 'eads to the Detail Supply?
A sectioin, a pompom, an' six 'undred men.
'Ere comes the clerk with 'is lantern an' keys
(Time, an 'igh time to be trekkin 'again!)
" Surplus of everything--draw what you please
"For...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly
by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them—
all the exciting detail
of the chase
and the escape, the error
the flash of genius—
all to no end save beauty
the eternal—
So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful
for this
to be warned against
saluted and defied—
It...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
WHILE my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long,
And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight passes,
And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the breath of my infant,
There in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision presses upon me:
The...Read more of this...
by
Constantine P Cavafy
He finished the painting yesterday noon. Now
he studies it in detail. He has painted him in a
gray unbuttoned coat, a deep gray; without
any vest or any tie. With a rose-colored shirt;
open at the collar, so something might be seen
also of the beauty of his chest, of his neck.
The right temple is almost entirely
covered by his hair, his beautiful hair
(parted...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.
The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
Earliest morning, switching all the tracks
that cross the sky from cinder star to star,
coupling the ends of streets
to trains of light.
now draw us into daylight in our beds;
and clear away what presses on the brain:
put out the neon shapes
that float and swell and glare
down the gray avenue between the eyes
in pinks and yellows,...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas in the year of 1746, on a fine summer afternoon,
When trees and flowers were in full bloom,
That widow Riddel sat knitting stockings on a little rustic seat,
Which her only son had made for her, which was very neat.
The cottage she lived in was in the wilds of Nithsdale,
Where many a poor soul had cause to bewail
The loss...Read more of this...
by
Erica Jong
I was sick of being a woman,
sick of the pain,
the irrelevant detail of sex,
my own concavity
uselessly hungering
and emptier whenever it was filled,
and filled finally
by its own emptiness,
seeking the garden of solitude
instead of men.
The white bed
in the green garden--
I looked forward
to sleeping alone
the way some long
for a lover.
Even when you arrived,
I tried to beat you
away with my sadness,
my cynical seductions,
and...Read more of this...
by
Obi Nwakanma
for Christopher Okigbo
Emrnanuel Ifeajuna &
Chukwuma Nzeogwu
I
It was a room above the alcove
in a city renewed by junipers
And by desires...
Stripped of words,
the moments recalled;
where the tower,
lo, was in sight:
memories undaunted by sound
or flames of the amethyst,
spoke to me;
spoke to me like the preacher from…
I recall this moment staggering through the wind,...Read more of this...
by
Philip Larkin
Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.
Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding...Read more of this...
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