Famous Duress Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Duress poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous duress poems. These examples illustrate what a famous duress poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.
Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.
They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.
I want you to see this before I leave:
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus that said:
my bleeding is under control
A red plant in a cemetary of plastic wreaths.
A last attempt: the language is a di...Read more of this...
by
Rich, Adrienne
...consecrate with unsuccess
An acreage of God’s forgetfulness,
Left here above the foam and long ago
Made right for my duress;
Where soon the sea,
My foaming and long-clamoring enemy,
Will have within the cryptic, old embrace
Of her triumphant arms—a memory.
Why then, the place?
What forage of the sky or of the shore
Will make it any more,
To me, than my award of what was left
Of number, time, and space?
And what is on me now that I should heed
The durance or the s...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ill.
What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument....Read more of this...
by
Milosz, Czeslaw
...n yourself,
a skin falls off,
a big eared head appears,
an eye and mouth.
6)
Under watery here,
under breath, under duress,
understand a pain
has threaded a needle with a little man --
gone fishing.
And fish appear.
7)
If small were big,
if then were now,
if here were there,
if find were found,
if mind were all there was,
would the animals still save us?
8)
A head was put
upon the shelf got took
by animal's hand and stuck
upon a vacant corpse
who, blurred, c...Read more of this...
by
Creeley, Robert
...hing too strange:
Love builds of what Time takes away,
Till Death itself is less than Change.
Who sees enough in his duress
May go as far as dreams have gone;
Who sees a little may do less
Than many who are blind have done;
Who sees unchastened here the soul
Triumphant has no other sight
Than has a child who sees the whole
World radiant with his own delight.
Far journeys and hard wandering
Await him in whose crude surmise
Peace, like a mask, hides everything
Tha...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...idst his trembling fits,
Has hardly kept him in his wits;
And though he speak with fraud and finesse,
'Tis said beneath duress per minas.
For we're in peril of our souls
From your vile feathers, tar and poles;
And vows extorted are not binding
In law, and so not worth the minding.
For we have in this hurly-burly
Sent off our consciences on furlow;
Thrown our religion o'er in form,
Our ship to lighten in the storm.
Nor need we blush your Whigs before;
Had we no virtue, you've ...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...the back of Time and urged him on
With piquant spur, past chapel and past cross:
How Charles, King of Navarre, in long duress
By mandate of King John within the walls
Of Crevacoeur and then of strong Alleres,
In faithful ward of Sir Tristan du Bois,
Was now escaped, had supped with Guy Kyrec,
Had now a pardon of the Regent Duke
By half compulsion of a Paris mob,
Had turned the people's love upon himself
By smooth harangues, and now was bold to claim
That France was not the K...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
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