Famous Ego Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Ego poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous ego poems. These examples illustrate what a famous ego poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
George Eliot
"I grant you ample leave
To use the hoary formula 'I am'
Naming the emptiness where thought is not;
But fill the void with definition, 'I'
Will be no more a datum than the words
You link false inference with, the 'Since' & 'so'
That, true or not, make up the atom-whirl.
Resolve your 'Ego', it is all one...Read more of this...
by
Ntozake Shange
somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff ?not my poems or a dance i gave up in the street? but somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff
like a kleptomaniac workin hard & forgettin while stealin? this is mine/this aint yr stuff/?now why don’t you put me back & let me hang out in my own self
somebody almost walked...Read more of this...
by
Stanley Kunitz
If the water were clear enough,
if the water were still,
but the water is not clear,
the water is not still,
you would see yourself,
slipped out of your skin,
nosing upstream,
slapping, thrashing,
tumbling
over the rocks
till you paint them
with your belly's blood:
Finned Ego,
yard of muscle that coils,
uncoils.
If the knowledge were given you,
but it is not given,
for the membrane is clouded
with self-deceptions
and the iridescent image swims
through...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
Richard Chessick, John Gedo, James Grotstein and Vamik Voltan
What darknesses have you lit up for me
What depths of infinite space plumbed
With your finely honed probes
What days of unending distress lightened
With your wisdom, skills and jouissance?
Conquistadores of the unconscious
For three decades how often have I come to you
And from your teachings gathered the manna
Of meaning eluding me alone in...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Not even my pride shall suffer much;
Not even my pride at all, maybe,
If this ill-timed, intemperate clutch
Be loosed by you and not by me,
Will suffer; I have been so true
A vestal to that only pride
Wet wood cannot extinguish, nor
Sand, nor its embers scattered, for,
See all these years, it has not died.
And if indeed, as I dare think,
You cannot push...Read more of this...
by
Anais Nin
"Am I, at bottom, that fervent little Spanish Catholic child who chastised herself for loving toys, who forbade herself the enjoyment of sweet foods, who practiced silence, who humiliated her pride, who adored symbols, statues, burning candles, incense, the caress of nuns, organ music, for whom Communion was a great event? I was so exalted by the idea of...Read more of this...
by
William Matthews
"First, do no harm," the Hippocratic
Oath begins, but before she might enjoy
such balm, the docs had to harm her tumor.
It was large, rare, and so anomalous
in its behavior that at first they mis-
diagnosed it. "Your wife will die of it
within a year." But in ten days or so
I sat beside her bed with hot-and-sour
soup and heard an intern congratulate
her...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
If Ezra Pound were alive today
(and he is)
he'd be teaching
at a small college in the Pacific Northwest
and attending the annual convention
of writing instructors in St. Louis
and railing against tenure,
saying tenure
is a ladder whose rungs slip out
from under the scholar as he climbs
upwards to empty heaven
by the angels abandoned
for tenure killeth the spirit
(with tenure no man becomes master)
Texts are...Read more of this...
by
Les Murray
In the World language, sometimes called
Airport Road, a thinks balloon with a gondola
under it is a symbol for speculation.
Thumbs down to ear and tongue:
World can be written and read, even painted
but not spoken. People use their own words.
Latin letters are in it for names, for e.g.
OK and H2S O4, for musical notes,
but mostly it's diagrams: skirt-figure, trousered figure
have escaped...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Marvell
Quisnam adeo, mortale genus, praecordia versat:
Heu Palmae, Laurique furor, vel simplicis Herbae!
Arbor ut indomitos ornet vix una labores;
Tempora nec foliis praecingat tota maglignis.
Dum simud implexi, tranquillae ad ferta Quiaetis,
Omnigeni coeunt Flores, integraque Sylva.
Alma Quies, teneo te! & te Germana Quietis
Simplicitas! Vos ergo diu per Templa, per urbes,
Quaesivi, Regum perque alta Palatia frustra.
Sed vos Hotrorum per opaca siluentia longe
Celarant Plantae...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
The photographic chamber of the eye
records bare painted walls, while an electric light
lays the chromium nerves of plumbing raw;
such poverty assaults the ego; caught
naked in the merely actual room,
the stranger in the lavatory mirror
puts on a public grin, repeats our name
but scrupulously reflects the usual terror.
Just how guilty are we when the ceiling
reveals no cracks that can be decoded?...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
He woke; the clank and racket of the train
Kept time with angry throbbings in his brain.
Then for a while he lapsed and drowsed again.
At last he lifted his bewildered eyes
And blinked, and rolled them sidelong; hills and skies,
Heavily wooded, hot with August haze,
And, slipping backward, golden for his gaze,
Acres of harvest.
Feebly now...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Marvell
Nempe sic innumero succrescunt agmine libri,
Saepia vix toto ut jam natet una mari.
Fortius assidui surgunt a vulnere praeli:
Quoque magis pressa est, auctior Hydra redit.
Heu quibus Anticyris, quibus est sanabilis herbis
Improba scribendi pestis, avarus amor!
India sola tenet tanti medicamina morbi,
Dicitur & nostris ingemuisse malis.
Utile Tabacci dedit illa miserta venenum,
Acci veratro quod meliora potest.
Jamque vides olidas libris fumare popinas:
Naribus O doctis...Read more of this...
by
Erin Belieu
Make your daily monument the Ego,
use a masochist's epistemology
of shame and dog-eared certainty
that others less exacting might forgo.
If memory's an elephant, then feed
the animal. Resist revision: the stand
of feral raspberry, contraband
fruit the crows stole, ferrying seed
for miles ... No. It was a broken hedge,
not beautiful, sunlight tacking
its leafy gut in loose sutures. Lacking
imagination, you'll take the pledge
to remember -...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
"Poet and veteran of childhood, look!
See in me the obscene, for you have love,
For you have hatred, you, you must be judge,
Deliver judgement, Delmore Schwartz.
Well-known wishes have been to war,
The vicious mouth has chewed the vine.
The patient crab beneath the shirt
Has charmed such interests as Indies meant.
For I have walked within and seen each sea,
The fish that flies, the...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Dobyns
My stepdaughter and I circle round and round.
You see, I like the music loud, the speakers
throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether
Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so
each bass notes is like a hand smacking the gut.
But my stepdaughter disagrees. She is four
and likes the music decorous, pitched below
her own voice-that tenuous projection of self.
With music...Read more of this...
by
Thunchaththu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan
Omkaramaya porul moonayi pirinju udane,
Angaramayathinnu thaan thane sakshiyithu,
Bodham varuthu vathinnu aalayi ninna,
Paramacharya roopa ,Hari Narayanaya Nama.
Onnayi ninneyiha randennu kandalavi,
Yunadyi orindal batha mindavathalla mama,
Pande kanakku varuvan nin krupa valikal,
Undakayengaliha narayanaya nama.
My salutations to that Narayana,
Who is also the lord Hari,
For being the great teacher,
Who stood as a person , to make me know,
That truth which is revealed by the sound of...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
A smile fell in the grass.
Irretrievable!
And how will your night dances
Lose themselves. In mathematics?
Such pure leaps and spirals ----
Surely they travel
The world forever, I shall not entirely
Sit emptied of beauties, the gift
Of your small breath, the drenched grass
Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies.
Their flesh bears no relation.
Cold folds of ego, the calla,
And the tiger, embellishing itself ----
Spots, and a...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
whirligig twister
dancer prancer
st vitus’s quester
chancer romancer
the inkman cometh
from that nether world
where dream and coincidence
are darkly furled
accident rubbed him
into puzzling light
he is what he isn’t
(he’s the geist of zeit)
whirligig twister
dancer prancer
st vitus’s quester
chancer romancer
he cannot move
but he never stops
particle-wave
(ask the science-cops)
all creation swirls
from his restless frame
he isn’t what he is
that’s the inkman’s game
whirligig twister
dancer prancer
st vitus’s quester
chancer romancer
(ii) ninkam poop
so...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
Hic. On the grey sand beside the shallow stream
Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still
A lamp burns on beside the open book
That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon,
And, though you have passed the best of life, still trace,
Enthralled by the unconquerable delusion,
Magical shapes.
Ille. By the help of an image
I call to my own opposite, summon all
That I...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
(a)
they seek to celebrate the word
not to bring their knives out on a poem
dissecting it to find a heart
whose beat lies naked on a table
not to score in triumph on a line
no sensitive would put a nostril to
but simply to receive it as an
offering glimpsing the sacred there
poem probes the poet's once-intention
but each time said budges its truth
afresh (leaving...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
ALL the morn a spirit gay
Breathes within my heart a rhyme,
’Tis but hide and seek we play
In and out the courts of time.
Fairy lover, when my feet
Through the tangled woodland go,
’Tis thy sunny fingers fleet
Fleck the fire dews to and fro.
In the moonlight grows a smile
Mid its rays of dusty pearl—
’Tis but hide and seek the while,
As some frolic...Read more of this...
by
Randall Jarrell
Each day brings its toad, each night its dragon.
Der heilige Hieronymus--his lion is at the zoo--
Listens, listens. All the long, soft, summer day
Dreams affright his couch, the deep boils like a pot.
As the sun sets, the last patient rises,
Says to him, Father, trembles, turns away.
Often, to the lion, the saint said, Son.
To the man the saint says--but the man...Read more of this...
by
Nikki Giovanni
I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad
I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the...Read more of this...
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