Famous Dud Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Dud poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous dud poems. These examples illustrate what a famous dud poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Plath, Sylvia
...h makes you real.
At first the candle will not bloom at all --
It snuffs its bud
To almost nothing, to a dull blue dud.
I hold my breath until you creak to life,
Balled hedgehog,
Small and cross. The yellow knife
Grows tall. You clutch your bars.
My singing makes you roar.
I rock you like a boat
Across the Indian carpet, the cold floor,
While the brass man
Kneels, back bent, as best he can
Hefting his white pillar with the light
That keeps the sky a...Read more of this...
by
Sassoon, Siegfried
...the Allemands would get busy;
And then, of course, they started with five-nines
Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud.
Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst
Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,
While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.
He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,
Sick for escape,—loathing the strangled horror
And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.
An officer came blundering down th...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...was all he'd ever know.
So sitting in a poker game,
They lost the price for which they sold
To that bonehead a poor dud claim
That didn't have a speck of gold.
My story's true as gospel creed
Of these bright boys from Idaho;
They made a sucker of that Swede
And laughed to see the poor boob go,
And work like ****** on his ground,
Bucked by the courage of despair . . .
Till lo! A rich pay-streak he found,
That made him twice a millionaire.
So two smart...Read more of this...
by
Brodsky, Joseph
...Sometimes I'd smile. Or spit.
I said that the leaf may destory the bud;
what's fertile falls in fallow soil--a dud;
that on the flat field, the unshadowed plain
nature spills the seeds of trees in vain.
I sit by the window. Hands lock my knees.
My heavy shadow's my squat company.
My song was out of tune, my voice was cracked,
but at least no chorus can ever sing it back.
That talk like this reaps no reward bewilders
no one--no one's legs rest on ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...through the double door he spied a tiny child.
Then Mike Maloney muttered: "Hell! Now ain't that jest too bad;
It's Dud McClusky's orphen Nell a-lookin' for her dad.
An' him in back, a-lushin' wine wi' Violet de Vere-
Three times I've told the lousy swine to keep away from here."
"Pore leetle sing! He leaves her lone, so he go on ze spree:
I feex her yet, zat Violet," said Montreal Maree.
Now I'm accommodatin' when it comes to scented sin
But when I saw that ...Read more of this...
by
Sassoon, Siegfried
...ire:
No earthly chance can send you crawling back;
You’ve finished with machine-gun fire—
Knocked over in a hopeless dud-attack.
Somehow I always thought you’d get done in,
Because you were so desperate keen to live:
You were all out to try and save your skin,
Well knowing how much the world had got to give.
You joked at shells and talked the usual ‘shop,’
Stuck to your dirty job and did it fine:
With ‘Jesus Christ! when will it stop?
Three years .....Read more of this...
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