Famous Dragonfly Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Dream On

by James Tate
 Some people go their whole lives
without ever writing a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease.
and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing.
These same people stroll into a church 
as if that were a natural part of life. 
Investing money is...Read more of this...

How To Paint A Water Lily

by Ted Hughes
 To Paint a Water Lily

A green level of lily leaves
Roofs the pond's chamber and paves

The flies' furious arena: study
These, the two minds of this lady.

First observe the air's dragonfly
That eats meat, that bullets by

Or stands in space to take aim;
Others as dangerous comb the hum

Under the trees. There are battle-shouts
And death-cries everywhere hereabouts

But inaudible, so the eyes praise
To see...Read more of this...

Favrile

by Mark Doty
 Glassmakers,
at century's end,
compounded metallic lusters

in reference
to natural sheens (dragonfly
and beetle wings,

marbled light on kerosene)
and invented names
as coolly lustrous

as their products'
scarab-gleam: Quetzal,
Aurene, Favrile.

Suggesting,
respectively, the glaze
of feathers,

that sun-shot fog
of which halos
are composed,

and -- what?
What to make of Favrile,
Tiffany's term

for his coppery-rose
flushed with gold
like the alchemized

atmosphere of sunbeams
in a Flemish room?
Faux Moorish,

fake Japanese,
his lamps illumine
chiefly themselves,

copying waterlilies'
bronzy stems,
wisteria or trout scales;

surfaces burnished
like...Read more of this...

Winding River (2)

by Du Fu
 Court return every day pawn spring clothes Every day river area utmost drunk return Wine debt common go place have Life seventy always rare Through flowers vanessa butterfly deep deep see Drop water dragonfly leisurely fly Pass on speech time all be on move Brief time mutual recognise not mutual separate  I come back from...Read more of this...

The dragonfly

by Matsuo Basho
 The dragonfly
can't quite land
 on that blade of grass....Read more of this...

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