Famous Ferocious Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Albert and the Lion

by Marriott Edgar
 There's a famous seaside place called Blackpool,
That's noted for fresh air and fun,
And Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom
Went there with young Albert, their son.

A grand little lad was young Albert,
All dressed in his best; quite a swell
With a stick with an 'orse's 'ead 'andle,
The finest that Woolworth's could sell.

They didn't think much of the Ocean:
The waves, they were fiddlin' and...Read more of this...

For My Father, Karachi 1947

by Meena Alexander
Mid-May, centipedes looped over netting at the well's mouth.
Girls grew frisky in summer frocks, lilies spotted with blood.

You were bound to meteorology,
Science of fickle clouds, ferocious winds.

The day you turned twenty-six fighter planes cut a storm,
Fissured air baring the heart's intricate meshwork

Of want and need—
Springs of cirrus out of which sap and shoot you raised me.

Crossing Chand Bibi Road,
Named after...Read more of this...

Florida

by Elizabeth Bishop
 The state with the prettiest name,
the state that floats in brackish water,
held together by mangrave roots
that bear while living oysters in clusters, 
and when dead strew white swamps with skeletons, 
dotted as if bombarded, with green hummocks
like ancient cannon-balls sprouting grass. 
The state full of long S-shaped birds, blue and white,
and unseen hysterical birds who rush up the scale
every...Read more of this...

This Life

by Grace Paley
 My friend tells me
a man in my house jumped off the roof
the roof is the eighth floor of this building
the roof door was locked how did he manage?
his girlfriend had said goodbye I'm leaving
he was 22
his mother and father were hurrying
at that very moment
from upstate to help him move out of Brooklyn
they had heard about the girl

the people who...Read more of this...

Lost

by Robert William Service
 "Black is the sky, but the land is white--
 (O the wind, the snow and the storm!)--
 Father, where is our boy to-night?
 Pray to God he is safe and warm."

 "Mother, mother, why should you fear?
 Safe is he, and the Arctic moon
 Over his cabin shines so clear--
 Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon."

"It's getting dark...Read more of this...

Marginalia

by Billy Collins
 Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up...Read more of this...

Poem For South African Women

by June Jordan
Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands
by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land
into new dust that
rising like a marvelous pollen will be
fertile
even as the first woman whispering
imagination to the trees around her made
for righteous fruit
from such deliberate defense of life
as no other still
will claim inferior to any other safety
in the world

The whispers too they
intimate to the...Read more of this...

Cartographies of Silence

by Adrienne Rich
 1.

A conversation begins
with a lie. and each 

speaker of the so-called common language feels
the ice-floe split, the drift apart 

as if powerless, as if up against
a force of nature 

A poem can being
with a lie. And be torn up. 

A conversation has other laws
recharges itself with its own 

false energy, Cannot be torn
up. Infiltrates our blood. Repeats itself. 

Inscribes...Read more of this...

Duello

by Robert William Service
 A Frenchman and an Englishman
Resolved to fight a duel,
And hit upon a savage plan,
Because their hate was cruel.
They each would fire a single shot
In room of darkness pitchy,
And who was killed and who was not
Would hang on fingers twitchy.

The room was bare and dark as death,
And each ferocious fighter
Could hear his fierce opponent's breath
And clutched his pistol tighter.
The Gaston...Read more of this...

A Dimple in the Tomb

by Emily Dickinson
 A Dimple in the Tomb
Makes that ferocious Room
A Home --...Read more of this...

The Lion and Albert

by Marriott Edgar
 There's a famous seaside place called Blackpool,
That's noted for fresh air and fun,
And Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom
Went there with young Albert, their son.

A grand little lad was young Albert,
All dressed in his best; quite a swell
With a stick with an 'orse's 'ead 'andle,
The finest that Woolworth's could sell.

They didn't think much of the Ocean:
The waves, they were fiddlin' and...Read more of this...

Dream Song 108: Sixteen below. Our care like stranded hulls

by John Berryman
 Sixteen below. Our care like stranded hulls
litter all day our little Avenues.
It was 28 below.
No one goes anywhere. Fabulous calls
to duty clank. Icy dungeons, though, 
have much to mention to you.

At Harvard & Yale must Pussy-cat be heard
in the dead of winter when we must be sad
and feel by the weather had.
Chrysanthemums crest, far way, in the Emperor's garden
and,...Read more of this...

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