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Famous Explosion Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Thomas, Dylan
...iously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then
holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the
kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to
break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this
time of year, with spats of snow, would t...Read more of this...



by Belloc, Hilaire
...br>
He pointed it towards his Sister,
Aimed very carefully, but
Missed her!
His Father, who was standing near,
The Loud Explosion chanced to Hear,
And reprimanded Algernon
For playing with a Loaded Gun....Read more of this...

by Milosz, Czeslaw
...rom his brow,
then one day he plants a big load of dynamite
and is surprised that afterward everything spouts up in the explosion.
Agape, he observes the clouds and what is hanging in them:
globes, penal codes, dead cats floating on their backs, locomotives.
They turn in the skeins of white clouds like trash in a puddle.
While below on the earth a banner, the color of a romantic rose,
flutters,
and a long row of military trains crawls on the weed-covered tracks.Read more of this...

by Agustini, Delmira
...SpanishSi la vida es amor, bendita sea!Quiero más vida para amar! Hoy sientoQue no valen mil años de la ideaLo que un minuto azul del sentimiento.Mi corazon moria triste y lento…Hoy abre en luz como una flor febea;La vida brota como un mar violentoDonde la mano del amor golpea!Hoy partio hacia la noche, triste, fríaRotas las alas mi melancolía;Como u...Read more of this...

by Dickey, James
...ion
Of being the last, but none of how much
Your unnoticed going will mean:
How much the timid poem needs

The mindless explosion of your rage,

The glutton's internal fire the elk's
Heart in the belly, sprouting wings,

The pact of the "blind swallowing
Thing," with himself, to eat
The world, and not to be driven off it
Until it is gone, even if it takes

Forever. I take you as you are

And make of you what I will,
Skunk-bear, carcajou, bloodthirsty

Non-survivor.

 ...Read more of this...



by Edgar, Marriott
...r> 
When a hot shot came in thro' the porthole, 
And a gunpowder barrel got struck. 

By gum! there weren't 'alf an explosion,
The gun crew were filled with alarm. 
As out of the porthole went Joseph, 
Wi' a cannon ball under each arm. 

At that moment up came the 'Boat-swine'
He says 'Where's Joe?' Gunner replied... 
'E's taken two cannon balls with 'im, 
And gone for a breather outside.' 

'Do y' think he'll be long?' said the 'Boat-swine' 
The g...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.

Or was it a common accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?
If not,
if each came to his or her blindness separately,

how did they ever manage to find one another?
Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse
to locate even one fellow mouse with vision
let alone two other blind ones?

And how, in their tiny darkness,
could they possibly have run after a farmer's wife
or anyone else's wif...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...ceeded at last,
And Jenny thanked God when the danger was past,
But at the same instant the silence was broke
By a loud explosion, which soon filled the mine with smoke. 

But, oh, God be thanked! the greatest danger was past,
But when Jenny saw Jack Allingford, she stood aghast,
Because the blood was issuing from his nest and ears,
And as Jenny viewed his wounds she shed many tears. 

But heroic Jenny was not one of the fainting sort,
For immediately to the mouth of ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...He was a minin' engineer,
An' doin' real well,
A credit to his bringin' up.
But his very first position ther was an explosion in the mine.
And I'm glad! I'm glad!
He ain't here to see me now.
Neddy! Neddy!
I'm your mother still, Neddy.
Don't turn from me like that.
I can't abear it. I can't! I can't!
What did you say?
Oh, yes, Sir.
I'm here.
I'm very sorry,
I don't know what I'm sayin'.
No, Sir,
Not till after Neddy died.
'Twas the next...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...nd the way for her old feet.
Her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti, whose
husband was killed in a tunnel explosion through
the negligence of a fellow-servant,
Works ten hours a day, sometimes twelve, picking onions
for Jasper on the Bowmanville road.
She takes a street car at half-past five in the morning,
Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti does,
And gets back from Jasper's with cash for her day's
work, between nine and ten o'clock at night.
Last week she got ...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...
Our own, which we were hoping to keep hidden.
We don't need paintings or
Doggerel written by mature poets when
The explosion is so precise, so fine.
Is there any point even in acknowledging
The existence of all that? Does it
Exist? Certainly the leisure to
Indulge stately pastimes doesn't,
Any more. Today has no margins, the event arrives
Flush with its edges, is of the same substance,
Indistinguishable. "Play" is something else;
It exists, in a society speci...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...rkmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs;
The fall of grenades through the rent roof—the fan-shaped explosion; 
The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air. 

Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general—he furiously waves with his
 hand; 
He gasps through the clot, Mind not me—mind—the entrenchments. 

34
Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth;
(I tell not the fall of Alamo, 
Not one escaped to tell the fall o...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...
Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash?
Your whole existence going off in your face
in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography-
nothing like the three large volumes you envisioned.

Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance
here, some bolt of truth forking across the water,
an ultimate Light before all the lights go out,
dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage.
But if something does flash before your eyes
as you go under, it will probably ...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...opes, and tackle without a single accident. 

But, alas! the fire had reached the powder magszine,
Then followed an explosion, oh! what a fesrful scene;
But the exploslon was witnessed by Captain Babby of the ship "Carline,"
Who most fortunately arrived in the nick of time. 

And fourteen additional human beings were saved from the "Kent,"
And they thanked Captain Babby and God, who to them succour sent,
And had saved them from being burnt, and drowned in the briny de...Read more of this...

by Larkin, Philip
...On the day of the explosion
Shadows pointed towards the pithead:
In thesun the slagheap slept.

Down the lane came men in pitboots
Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke 
Shouldering off the freshened silence.

One chased after rabbits; lost them;
Came back with a nest of lark's eggs;
Showed them; lodged them in the grasses.

SO they passed in beards ...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...n one
 harbor, they stick in one lump
And then explode it, nothing can hold them down; there is no
 way to express that explosion; all that exists
Roars into flame, the tortured fragments rush away from each 
 other into all the sky, new universes
Jewel the black breast of night; and far off the outer nebulae 
 like charging spearmen again
Invade emptiness.
 No wonder we are so fascinated with 
 fireworks
And our huge bombs: it is a kind of homesickness perhaps for
 the h...Read more of this...

by McGough, Roger
...were.
Ah, theres been a mistake. The hair
you see, its black, now Stephens fair ...
Whats that? The explosion?
Of course, burnt black. Silly of me.
I should have known. Then lets get on.

The face, is that the face mask?
that mask of charred wood
blistered scarred could
that have been a child's face?
The sweater, where intact, looks
in fact all too familiar.
But one must be sure.

The scoutbelt. Yes thats his.
I recognise th...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...ce and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it: consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky
 the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth....Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...nged together
for a year, a minute, an hour.
Suddenly there was a motion,
as startling, there, to every sense
as an explosion. Then it dropped 
to insistent, cautious creeping
in the region of the heart, 
prodding me from desperate sleep.
I raised my head. A slight young weed
had pushed up through the heart and its
green head was nodding on the breast.
(All this was in the dark.)
It grew an inch like a blade of grass;
next, one leaf shot out of its sid...Read more of this...

by Hicok, Bob
...done. Second place 
was approaching 
a frozen gas-cap with lighter
in hand while thinking 
heat melts ice and not 
explosion kills *******. First 
place was passing 
through a bedroom door 
and removing silk that did not
belong to my wife.
Making a bookcase is not 
the extent of my apology. 
I've also been beaten up 
in a bar for saying huevos 
rancheros in a way 
insulting to the patrons' 
ethnicity. I've also lost 
my job because lying 
face down on the...Read more of this...

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