Famous Exposure Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Mysterious Naked Man

...s asking.
'I don't know, ' says the witness. 'He was naked.'
There is talk of dogs-this is no ordinary case
of indecent exposure, the man has been seen
a dozen times since the milkman spotted him and now
the sky is turning purple and voices
carry a long way and the children
have gone a little crazy as they often do at dusk
and cars are arriving
from other sections of the city.
And the mysterious naked man
is kneeling behind a garbage can or lying on his belly
in somebody's ga...Read more of this...
by Nowlan, Alden


A Tale of the Sea

...ized with sudden dread,
when they discovered that two of the men were dead. 

And the two survivors were exhausted from exposure, hunger, and cold,
Which used the spectators to shudder when them they did behold;
And with hunger the poor men couldn't stand on their feet,
They felt so weakly on their legs for want of meat. 

They were carried to a boarding-house without delay,
But those that were looking on were stricken with dismay,
When the remains of James and Angus McDonald...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz

Bridge Over The Aire Book 2

...es to their ankles

A delivery boy

With a brimming basket

A man with a beer pail

In either hand.





11



The long exposure

Caught every movement

In a single frame

The pensioner shuffling

With his stick

The girl tying

A ribbon

In glowing sepia

A tiny kingdom

Swept away before

I was born.





12



Unnoticed and unwatched

We clambered over the remains

Of the Bridgefields gathering

Jamjarfuls of dandelions

Placing them with reverence

By broken grates

In Po...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Custer

...and Brewster sobs aloud.
Alas, the ravage wrought by toil and woe
On faces that were fair twelve moons ago.
Bronzed by exposure to the heat and cold, 
Still young in years, yet prematurely old, 
By insults humbled and by labor worn, 
They stand in youth's bright hour, of all youth's graces shorn.



XLV.
A scanty garment rudely made of sacks
Hangs from their loins; bright blankets drape their backs; 
About their necks are twisted tangled strings
Of gaudy beads, while tinklin...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

Exposure

...It is December in Wicklow:
Alders dripping, birches
Inheriting the last light,
The ash tree cold to look at.

A comet that was lost
Should be visible at sunset,
Those million tons of light
Like a glimmer of haws and rose-hips,

And I sometimes see a falling star.
If I could come on meteorite!
Instead I walk through damp leaves,
Husks, the spent flukes of a...Read more of this...
by Heaney, Seamus


Exposure

...I

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us . . .
Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . .
Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . .
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
 But nothing happens.

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
Like twitching agonies of men among i...Read more of this...
by Owen, Wilfred

from the Ansty Experience

...
quality's a private quarrel
between the poem and the poet - taste
the private hang-up of receivers
mostly migrained by exposure
to opinions not their own - fed
from a culture no one bleeds in
sustained by reputations manured
by a few and spread by hearsay

(b)
these meetings are a modest vow
to let each poet speak uncluttered
from establishment's traditions
and conditions where passions rippling
from the marrow can choose a space
to innocent themselves and long-held
tastes f...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

Tortoise Gallantry

...ged out of an eternity of silent isolation
And doomed to partiality, partial being,
Ache, and want of being,
Want,
Self-exposure, hard humiliation, need to add himself on to her.

Born to walk alone,
Fore-runner,
Now suddenly distracted into this mazy side-track,
This awkward, harrowing pursuit,
This grim necessity from within.

Does she know
As she moves eternally slowly away?
Or is he driven against her with a bang, like a bird flying in the dark against a window,
All knowl...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.

Victory

...or fog or sun-struck
 rain or bitterest night my sack of hidden
poetries, old glue shredding from their spines

my time exposure of the Leonids
 over Joshua Tree

As if we're going to win this O because

•

If you have a sister I am not she
nor your mother nor you my daughter
nor are we lovers or any kind of couple
 except in the intensive care
 of poetry and
death's master plan architecture-in-progress
draft elevations of a black-and-white mosaic dome
the master left on your...Read more of this...
by Rich, Adrienne

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