Famous Distortion Poems by Famous Poets

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

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8 Fragments For Kurt Cobain

...lust
In timeless illusion 

2/
The guitar claws kept tightening, I guess on your heart stem.
The loops of feedback and distortion, threaded right thru
Lucifer's wisdom teeth, and never stopped their reverbrating
In your mind 

And from the stage
All the faces out front seemed so hungry
With an unbearably wholesome misunderstanding

From where they sat, you seemed so far up there
High and live and diving

And instead you were swamp crawling
Down, deeper
Until you tasted the E...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Jim


Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

...anino says of it: "Realism in this portrait
No longer produces and objective truth, but a bizarria . . . . 
However its distortion does not create
A feeling of disharmony . . . . The forms retain
A strong measure of ideal beauty," because
Fed by our dreams, so inconsequential until one day
We notice the hole they left. Now their importance
If not their meaning is plain. They were to nourish
A dream which includes them all, as they are
Finally reversed in the accumulating mirr...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John

The Comedian As The Letter C

...free 
74 From the unavoidable shadow of himself 
75 That lay elsewhere around him. Severance 
76 Was clear. The last distortion of romance 
77 Forsook the insatiable egotist. The sea 
78 Severs not only lands but also selves. 
79 Here was no help before reality. 
80 Crispin beheld and Crispin was made new. 
81 The imagination, here, could not evade, 
82 In poems of plums, the strict austerity 
83 Of one vast, subjugating, final tone. 
84 The drenching of stale live...Read more of this...
by Stevens, Wallace

the eyes that haunt me

...esh air - they are invented
by the lies of paint or make their mark
in a memory that had a truth
to feed on but only by distortion

right now they sell a dream
i'd like to see the back of - they come
with a whole body rippling me apart
disturbing me with echoes of a flesh
so many layers down the light derides it

why can't i grasp it now
this love's reverberation of a sound
that tunes me deeper than my marrow
but runs from me when wanted to be real
(today's a dried pool whisp...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

The Guardian-Angel

...yes beside thy breast,
Pressing the brain, which too much thought expands,
Back to its proper size again, and smoothing
Distortion down till every nerve had soothing,
And all lay quiet, happy and suppressed.

V.

How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired!
I think how I should view the earth and skies
And sea, when once again my brow was bared
After thy healing, with such different eyes. 
O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:
And knowing this, is love, and love is dut...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert


The Torture of Cuauhtemoc

...the proof. He answered not, 
But writhing with intolerable pain, 
Convulsed in every limb, and all his face 
Wrought to distortion with the agony, 
Turned on his lord a look of wild appeal, 
The secret half atremble on his lips, 
Livid and quivering, that waited yet 
For leave -- for leave to utter it -- one sign -- 
One word -- one little word -- to ease his pain. 


As one reclining in the banquet hall, 
Propped on an elbow, garlanded with flowers, 
Saw lust and greed and b...Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan

The Triumph of Life

.... I turned & knew
(O Heaven have mercy on such wretchedness!)
That what I thought was an old root which grew
To strange distortion out of the hill side
Was indeed one of that deluded crew,
And that the grass which methought hung so wide
And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
And that the holes it vainly sought to hide
Were or had been eyes.--"lf thou canst forbear
To join the dance, which I had well forborne,"
Said the grim Feature, of my thought aware,
"I will now tel...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

This Is A Photograph Of Me

...surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)...Read more of this...
by Atwood, Margaret

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