Famous Focus Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Focus poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous focus poems. These examples illustrate what a famous focus poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Tebb, Barry
...bought
A lacquered screen holding court, a century’s junk.
An ivory dial telephone, a bowl of early daffodils
To focus on.
I was the first to read, speaking of James Simmons’ death,
My anguish at the year long silence from his last letter
To the Christmas card in Gaelic Nollaig Shona -
With the message “Jimmy’s doing better than expected.”
The difficulty I had in finding his publisher’s address -
Salmon Press, Cliffs of Moher, County Clare -
Then a sof...Read more of this...
by
Tessimond, A S J
...rstanding)
To come round the corner of Wardour Street into the Square
Or to signal across the Park and share my bed;
I, focus in night for star-sent beams of light,
I, fulcrum of levers whose end I cannot see ...
Have this one deftness - that I admit undeftness:
Know that the stars are far, the levers long:
Can understand my unstrength....Read more of this...
by
Bradley, George
...on the way to netsuke hell
bound for a flea circus in full
retreat toward sub-atomic particles--
difficult to keep in focus, the figures
at that end are nearly indistinguishable,
generals at the heads of minute armies
differing little from fishwives,
emperors the same as eskimos
huddled under improvisations of snow--
eskimos, though, now have the advantage,
for it seems to be freezing there, a climate
which might explain the population's
outr? dress, their period costumes
...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...cially if they are
aged.
but age is the total of
our doing.
they have aged
badly
because they have
lived
out of focus,
they have refused to
see.
not their fault?
whose fault?
mine?
I am asked to hide
my viewpoint
from them
for fear of their
fear.
age is no crime
but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted
life
among so many
deliberately
wasted
lives
is....Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...ouse went to bed,
I sat up drinking the Christmas brandy,
watching your picture,
letting the tree move in and out of focus.
The bulbs vibrated.
They were a halo over your forehead.
Then they were a beehive,
blue, yellow, green, red;
each with its own juice, each hot and alive
stinging your face. But you did not move.
I continued to watch, forcing myself,
waiting, inexhaustible, thirty-five.
I wanted your eyes, like the shadows
of two smal...Read more of this...
by
Harjo, Joy
...there are no words for how the real world
collapses.I could say it in my own and the sacred mounds would come into
focus, but I couldn't take it in this dingy envelope.So I look at the stars in
this strange city, frozen to the back of the sky, the only promises that ever
make sense.
My brother-in-law hung out with white people, went to law school with a
perfect record, quit.Says you can keep your laws, your words.And
practiced law on the street with his...Read more of this...
by
Berryman, John
...ten into a ball
elongate & valved Henry. Tuck him peace.
Render him sightless,
or ruin at high rate his crampon focus,
wipe out his need. Reduce him to the rest of us.
—But, Bones, you is that.
—I cannot remember. I am going away.
There was something in my dream about a Cat,
which fought and sang.
Something about a lyre, an island. Unstrung.
Linked to the land at low tide. Cables fray.
Thank you for everything....Read more of this...
by
Derieva, Regina
...ed isle waved and cloudy,
each angle crystalline and salty.
my lens into reality.
Point of space just visible,
focus of beams ineffable,
swith of signals transmissible,
receiver of voices inaudible
At time's edge. No need have I to shout
in fear about this death of mine.
And any creature here is glad
to offer you a glass of wine....Read more of this...
by
Larkin, Philip
...ed trees,
The long soft tides of grass
Wrinkling away the gold
Wind-ridden waves- all these,
They say, come back to focus
As we grow old....Read more of this...
by
Graham, Jorie
...houlders, in my very carriage, forgive me,
begins to shred like this, as you see it do, now,
as if I were too much in focus making the film shred,
it growing very hot (as in giving birth) though really
it being just evening, the movie back on the reel,
the sky one step further down into the world but only one step,
me trying to pull it down, onto this frame,
for which it seems so fitting,
for which the whole apparatus of attention had seemed to prepare us,
and then t...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...arger to my Eyes
That I stopped gauging -- satisfied --
For this enchanted size --
It was the limit of my Dream --
The focus of my Prayer --
A perfect -- paralyzing Bliss --
Contented as Despair --
I knew no more of Want -- or Cold --
Phantasms both become
For this new Value in the Soul --
Supremest Earthly Sum --
The Heaven below the Heaven above --
Obscured with ruddier Blue --
Life's Latitudes leant over -- full --
The Judgment perished -- too --
Why Bliss so scantily ...Read more of this...
by
Gilbert, Jack
..., makes my solitude gleam.
I watch from hiding for her sake. Knowing I am
there is hard on her, but it is the focus of her days.
She always looks down or looks away as she passes
in the evening. Except sometimes when, just before
going out of sight behind the distant canebrake,
she looks quickly back. It is too far for me to see,
but there is a moment of white if she turns her face....Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...hat has arisen,
How, my son, into your prison
White nights stare so brilliantly.
Now once more they burn,
Eyes that focus like a hawk,
And, upon your cross, the talk
Is again of death.
[1939. Spring]
VII
THE VERDICT
The word landed with a stony thud
Onto my still-beating breast.
Nevermind, I was prepared,
I will manage with the rest.
I have a lot of work to do today;
I need to slaughter memory,
Turn my living soul to stone
Then teach myself to live agai...Read more of this...
by
Bierce, Ambrose
...tremble badly,
For it's been a fortnight broke."
Then, for further comprehension
Of his attitude, he begs
I will focus my attention
On his various arms and legs--
How they all are contumacious;
Where they each, respective, lie;
How one trotter proves ungracious,
T' other one an alibi.
These particulars is mentioned
For to show his dismal state,
Which I wasn't first intentioned
To specifical relate.
None is worser to be dreaded
That I ever have heard tell
Tha...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...like an hourglass
Without varying in climate or quality
(Except perhaps to brighten bleakly and almost
Invisibly, in a focus sharpening toward death--more
Of this later). What should be the vacuum of a dream
Becomes continually replete as the source of dreams
Is being tapped so that this one dream
May wax, flourish like a cabbage rose,
Defying sumptuary laws, leaving us
To awake and try to begin living in what
Has now become a slum. Sydney Freedberg in his
Parmigian...Read more of this...
by
Ammons, A R
...ind what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:
but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is
magnificent with existence, is in
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for ...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...lowness of her cheek's yellowness
(To get on faster) until at last her
Cheek grew to be one master-plaster
Of mucus and focus from mere use of ceruse:
In short, she grew from scalp to udder
Just the object to make you shudder.
XVII.
You're my friend---
What a thing friendship is, world without end!
How it gives the heart and soul a stir-up
As if somebody broached you a glorious runlet,
And poured out, all lovelily, sparklingly, sunlit,
Our green Moldavia, the streak...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
....
The face of your mother smiles like a Madonna bereft
And the faces of our children are always somewhere
As you focus your midnight eyes soft with tears.
You create to survive, a Balzac writing against the clock
A Baudelaire writing against the bailiff’s knock
A Val?ry in the throes of ‘Narcisse Parle’.
When a far clock chimes you sigh and set aside the page:
There is no telephone to ring or call: I am distant and sick,
Frail as an old stick
Our spi...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...Sky -- a Tree?
Location's narrow way is for Ourselves --
Unto the Dead
There's no Geography --
But State -- Endowal -- Focus --
Where -- Omnipresence -- fly?...Read more of this...
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