Famous Flinch Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Flinch poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous flinch poems. These examples illustrate what a famous flinch poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Sexton, Anne
...ear tubes like earrings.
I lie as still as a bar of iron.
You can stick a needle
through my kneecap and I won't flinch.
I'm all shot up with Novocain.
This trance girl
is yours to do with.
You could lay her in a grave,
an awful package,
and shovel dirt on her face
and she'd never call back: Hello there!
But if you kissed her on the mouth
her eyes would spring open
and she'd call out: Daddy! Daddy!
Presto!
She's out of prison.
There was a theft.
Th...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...once it stood.
After forty years I remember
The first kiss I gave you
And most that you did not
Turn away or flinch or make
Conditions about any kisses
To follow but took my kiss
Simply as a gift.
58
It’s been a problem ever since
With everyone, no-one else was
So simple, always wanting more or
Less than I could give, when all
There was to follow was more of
The same but this is not meant
As a treatise on the epistemology
Of kissing but more o...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Robert
...through an unwashed goldfish globe.
I lay all day on my bed.
I chain-smoked through the night,
learning to flinch
at the flash of the matchlight.
Outside, the summer rain,
a simmer of rot and renewal,
fell in pinpricks.
Even new life is fuel.
My eyes throb.
Nothing can dislodge
the house with my first tooth
noosed in a knot to the doorknob.
Nothing can dislodge
the triangular blotch
of rot on the red roof,
a cedar hedge, or ...Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Charlotte
...He spurred his strength and master-will
To pass the figure by,
But, moving slow, it faced him straight,
It would not flinch nor quail:
Then first did Gilbert's strength abate,
His stony firmness quail.
He sank upon his knees and prayed;
The shape stood rigid there;
He called aloud for human aid,
No human aid was near.
An accent strange did thus repeat
Heaven's stern but just decree:
' The measure thou to her didst mete,
To thee shall measured be !'
Gilbert spra...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...t to hear
Of that Vast Dark --
That swept His Being -- back --
Grief is a Juggler -- boldest at the Play --
Lest if He flinch -- the eye that way
Pounce on His Bruises -- One -- say -- or Three --
Grief is a Gourmand -- spare His luxury --
Best Grief is Tongueless -- before He'll tell --
Burn Him in the Public Square --
His Ashes -- will
Possibly -- if they refuse -- How then know --
Since a Rack couldn't coax a syllable -- now....Read more of this...
by
Lorde, Audre
...this island where I live
shakes my hand, smiling.
"I knew your father," he says
"quite a man!" Smiles again.
I flinch at his raised eyebrow.
A long-gone woman's voice
lashes out at me in parting
"You will never be satisfied
until you have the whole world
in your bed!"
Now I am older than you were when you died
overwork and silence exploding your brain.
You are gradually receding from my face.
Who were you outside the 23rd Psalm?
Knowing so little
how did...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...ead:
"Shoot, son, 'twill be the best for both; shoot swift and straight," he said.
"Fire first and last, and do not flinch; for lost to hope am I;
And I will murmur: Vive La France! and bless you ere I die."
Half-blind with blows the boy stood there; he seemed to swoon and sway;
Then in that moment woke the soul of little Jean Desprez.
He saw the woods go sheening down; the larks were singing clear;
And oh! the scents and sounds of spring, how sweet they were! ho...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...-
``A master were lauded and sciolists shent,
``Parted the sheep from the goats!''
XI.
Well then, speak up, never flinch!
Quick, ere my candle's a snuff
---Burnt, do you see? to its uttermost inch---
_I_ believe in you, but that's not enough:
Give my conviction a clinch!
XII.
First you deliver your phrase
---Nothing propound, that I see,
Fit in itself for much blame or much praise---
Answered no less, where no answer needs be:
Off start the Two on their ways.
...Read more of this...
by
Tessimond, A S J
...stead of which we are resonant, explicit.
Our words like windows intercept our meaning.
Our four eyes fence and flinch and awkwardly
Wince into shadow, slide oblique to ambush.
Hands stir, retract. The pulse is insulated.
Blood is turned inwards, lonely; skin unhappy ...
While always under all, but interrupted,
Antennae stretch ... waver ... and almost ... touch....Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...little dark girl with
kind eyes
when it comes time to
use the knife
I won't flinch and
i won't blame
you,
as I drive along the shorealone
as the palms wave,
the ugly heavy palms,
as the living does not arrive
as the dead do notleave,
i won'tblame you,
insteaad
i will remeber the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remeber your sma...Read more of this...
by
Nash, Ogden
...s are composed of many a vitamin.
My lap is not the place to bitamin.
Although my raiment is not chinchilla,
I flinch to see it become vanilla.
Coniferous child, when vanilla melts
I’d rather it melted somewhere else.
Exit child with remains of cone.
I sit in the dusk. I am all alone,
Muttering spells like an angry Druid,
Alone, in the dusk, with the cleaning fluid....Read more of this...
by
Parker, Dorothy
...n.
I shall lie cool and quiet, who have lain
Fevered, and watched the book of day unfold.
Death will not see me flinch; the heart is bold
That pain has made incapable of pain.
Kinder the busy worms than ever love;
It will be peace to lie there, empty-eyed,
My bed made secret by the leveling showers,
My breast replenishing the weeds above.
And you will say of me, "Then has she died?
Perhaps I should have sent a spray of flowers."...Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
...n;
The Fair Maid of Perth caused the battle on the North Inch
'Twixt the Clans Chattan and Kay, and neither of them did flinch,
Until they were cut up inch by inch.
The scenery is lovely in the month of June,
When trees and flowers are in full bloom,
Especially near by the Palace of Scone,
Where the blackbird is heard whistling all day
While near by rolls on the clear silvery Tay.
Of all the cities in Scotland, beautiful Perth for me,
For it is the most elegant ci...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...
I am exhausted, I am exhausted ----
Pillar of white in a blackout of knives.
I am the magician's girl who does not flinch.
The villagers are untying their disguises, they are shaking hands.
Whose is that long white box in the grove, what have they accomplished, why am I cold....Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...nd them with their hundred cannon and him with a single gun:
The odds were a trifle heavy -- but he wasn't the sort to flinch.
So he opened fire on the army, did the boss of the Admiral Lynch.
They pounded his boat to pieces, they silenced his single gun,
And captured the whole consignment, for none of 'em cared to run;
And it don't say whether they shot him -- it don't even give his name --
But whatever they did I'll wager that he went to his graveyard game.Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...worth for his pay.)
"Rouse him at noon in the bushes, follow and press him hard --
Not for his ragings and roarings flinch ye from Adam-zad.
"But (pay, and I put back the bandage) this is the time to fear,
When he stands up like a tired man, tottering near and near;
When he stands up as pleading, in wavering, man-brute guise,
When he veils the hate and cunning of his little, swinish eyes;
"When he shows as seeking quarter, with paws like hands in prayer
That is the ...Read more of this...
by
Merrill, James
...amant needles bear down on him from
Whirling of outer space, too black, too near--
But he was taught as a puppy not to flinch,
Much less to imitate his bête noire Blanche
Who barked, fat foolish creature, at King Lear.
Still others fought in the road's filth over Jezebel,
Slavered on hearths of horned and pelted barons.
His forebears lacked, to say the least, forebearance.
Can nature change in him?Nothing's impossible.
The last chord fades.The night is ...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...only ask.
But as I knew him, so he was;
And somewhere among men to-day
Those old, unyielding eyes may flash,
And flinch—and look the other way....Read more of this...
by
McKay, Claude
...l not toy with it nor bend an inch.
Deep in the secret chambers of my heart
I muse my life-long hate, and without flinch
I bear it nobly as I live my part.
My being would be a skeleton, a shell,
If this dark Passion that fills my every mood,
And makes my heaven in the white world's hell,
Did not forever feed me vital blood.
I see the mighty city through a mist--
The strident trains that speed the goaded mass,
The poles and spires and towers vapor-kissed,...Read more of this...
by
Levertov, Denise
...ing my hills,
sleeping on green moss of my own woods,
I myself without warning touch it,
and leap up at myself--"
"--or flinch back
just in time."
"Yes, we learn that
It's not terror, it's pain we're talking about:
those places in us, like your dog's bruised head,
that are bruised forever, that time
never assuages, never."...Read more of this...
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