Famous Holes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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When I Die

by Nikki Giovanni
When I Diewhen i die i hope no one who ever hurt me cries  and if they cry i hope their eyes fall out  and a million maggots that had made up their brains  crawl from the empty holes and devour the flesh  that covered the evil that passed itself off as a person  that...Read more of this...

Gunner Joe

by Marriott Edgar
 I'll tell you a seafaring story, 
Of a lad who won honour and fame 
Wi' Nelson at Battle 'Trafalgar, 
Joe Moggeridge, that were his name. 

He were one of the crew of the Victory, 
His job when a battle begun 
Was to take cannon balls out o' basket 
And shove 'em down front end o' gun. 

One day him...Read more of this...

Disabled

by Wilfred Owen
 He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees
And girls glanced...Read more of this...

The Dong with a Luminous Nose

by Edward Lear
 When awful darkness and silence reign
Over the great Gromboolian plain,
Through the long, long wintry nights; --
When the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore; --
When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore: --

Then, through the vast and gloomy dark,
There moves what seems a fiery spark,
A lonely spark with silvery rays
Piercing the coal-black...Read more of this...

To a Contemporary Bunkshooter

by Carl Sandburg
 YOU come along. . . tearing your shirt. . . yelling about
Jesus.
Where do you get that stuff?
What do you know about Jesus?
Jesus had a way of talking soft and outside of a few
bankers and higher-ups among the con men of Jerusalem
everybody liked to have this Jesus around because
he never made any fake passes and everything
he said went and he...Read more of this...

Some Foreign Letters

by Anne Sexton
 I knew you forever and you were always old,
soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold
me for sitting up late, reading your letters,
as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me.
You posted them first in London, wearing furs
and a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety.
I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day,
where you guided...Read more of this...

Before

by Yehuda Amichai
 Before the gate has been closed,
before the last quetion is posed,
before I am transposed.
Before the weeds fill the gardens,
before there are no pardons,
before the concrete hardens.
Before all the flute-holes are covered,
beore things are locked in then cupboard,
before the rules are discovered.
Before the conclusion is planned,
before God closes his hand,
before we have nowhere to stand....Read more of this...

Squatters Children

by Elizabeth Bishop
 On the unbreathing sides of hills
they play, a specklike girl and boy,
alone, but near a specklike house.
The Sun's suspended eye
blinks casually, and then they wade
gigantic waves of light and shade.
A dancing yellow spot, a pup,
attends them. Clouds are piling up; 

a storm piles up behind the house.
The children play at digging holes.
The ground is hard; they try to use
one...Read more of this...

The Drunken Fisherman

by Robert Lowell
 Wallowing in this bloody sty,
I cast for fish that pleased my eye
(Truly Jehovah's bow suspends
No pots of gold to weight its ends);
Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout
Rose to my bait. They flopped about
My canvas creel until the moth
Corrupted its unstable cloth.

A calendar to tell the day;
A handkerchief to wave away
The gnats; a couch unstuffed with storm
Pouching a bottle in one...Read more of this...

The wistaria is faded

by Emile Verhaeren
The wistaria is faded and the hawthorn dead; but this is the season of the heather in flower, and on this calm and gentle evening the caressing wind brings you the perfumes of poor Campine.
Love them and breathe them in while brooding over its fate; its soil is bare and harsh and the wind wars on it; pools make their...Read more of this...

Son

by W S Merwin
As the shadow closed on the face once my father's
Three times learning forward far off she called
Good night in a whisper from before I was born
later through the burial a wren went on singing

then it was that I left for the coast to live
a single long mountain close to the shore
from it the sun rose and everyone there asked me
who...Read more of this...

Day of These Days

by Laurie Lee
 Such a morning it is when love
leans through geranium windows
and calls with a cockerel's tongue.

When red-haired girls scamper like roses
over the rain-green grass;
and the sun drips honey.

When hedgerows grow venerable,
berries dry black as blood,
and holes suck in their bees.

Such a morning it is when mice
run whispering from the church,
dragging dropped ears of harvest.

When the partridge draws back his spring
and...Read more of this...

Autumn Movement

by Carl Sandburg
 I CRIED over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind,...Read more of this...

The Alligator Bride

by Donald Hall
 The clock of my days winds down.
The cat eats sparrows outside my window.
Once, she brought me a small rabbit
which we devoured together, under
the Empire Table
while the men shrieked
repossessing the gold umbrella.

Now the beard on my clock turns white.
My cat stares into dark corners
missing her gold umbrella.
She is in love
with the Alligator Bride.

Ah, the tiny fine white
teeth! The Bride, propped...Read more of this...

The Condemned

by C S Lewis
 There is a wildness still in England that will not feed 
In cages; it shrinks away from the touch of the trainer's hand,
Easy to kill, not easy to tame. It will never breed 
In a zoo for the public pleasure. It will not be planned.

Do not blame us too much if we that are hedgerow folk 
Cannot swell the...Read more of this...

The Landrail

by John Clare
 How sweet and pleasant grows the way
Through summer time again
While Landrails call from day to day
Amid the grass and grain

We hear it in the weeding time
When knee deep waves the corn
We hear it in the summers prime
Through meadows night and morn

And now I hear it in the grass
That grows as sweet again
And let a minutes notice pass
And now tis...Read more of this...

Lament For Ignacio Sanchez Mejias

by Federico García Lorca
 1. Cogida and death 

At five in the afternoon. 
It was exactly five in the afternoon. 
A boy brought the white sheet 
at five in the afternoon. 
A frail of lime ready prepared 
at five in the afternoon. 
The rest was death, and death alone. 

The wind carried away the cottonwool 
at five in the afternoon. 
And the oxide...Read more of this...

Up The Country

by Henry Lawson
 I am back from up the country -- very sorry that I went -- 
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent; 
I have lost a lot of idols, which were broken on the track, 
Burnt a lot of fancy verses, and I'm glad that I am back. 
Further out may be the pleasant scenes of...Read more of this...

Crime and Punishment chapter XII

by Kahlil Gibran
 Then one of the judges of the city stood forth and said, "Speak to us of Crime and Punishment." 

And he answered saying: 

It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind, 

That you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others and therefore unto yourself. 

And for that wrong committed must you knock and wait a while...Read more of this...

Kindergarten Portrait Of My Mother At Mardi Gras

by Chris Tusa
 She looks rather pathetic, really,
leaning against the black air,
the three mangled fingers of her left hand
clutching a yellow purse,
her right arm raised over her head
as if to shield herself
from the silver shower of stars
raining down upon her.

Her mouth is a crack
growing beneath her nose.
Two dimples open like holes
in her cheeks. A pink ear
dangles from her chin.

Looking at it now,...Read more of this...

Adolescence II

by Rita Dove
 Although it is night, I sit in the bathroom, waiting.
Sweat prickles behind my knees, the baby-breasts are alert.
Venetian blinds slice up the moon; the tiles quiver in pale strips.

Then they come, the three seal men with eyes as round
As dinner plates and eyelashes like sharpened tines.
They bring the scent of licorice. One sits in the washbowl,

One on the bathtub...Read more of this...

Second Poem

by Peter Orlovsky
 Morning again, nothing has to be done, 
 maybe buy a piano or make fudge.
At least clean the room up for sure like my farther I've done flick 
 the ashes & butts over the bed side on the floor.
But frist of all wipe my glasses and drink the water 
 to clean the smelly mouth.
A nock on the...Read more of this...

Sonnet VIII: Theres Nothing Grieves Me

by Michael Drayton
 There's nothing grieves me, but that Age should haste, 
That in my days I may not see thee old, 
That where those two clear sparkling eyes are plac'd 
Only two loop-holes then I might behold; 
That lovely, arched, ivory, polish'd brow 
Defac'd with wrinkles that I might but see; 
Thy dainty hair, so curl'd and crisped now, 
Like grizzled...Read more of this...

September On Jessore Road

by Allen Ginsberg
 Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to **** but sand channel ruts

Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go

One Million aunts are dying for bread
One Million uncles lamenting the dead
Grandfather millions homeless and sad
Grandmother millions silently mad

Millions of daughters walk...Read more of this...

Hard Rock Returns To Prison From The Hospital For The Criminal Insane

by Etheridge Knight
 Hard Rock/ was/ "known not to take no **** 
From nobody," and he had the scars to prove it:
Split purple lips, lumbed ears, welts above
His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut
Across his temple and plowed through a thick 
Canopy of kinky hair. 

The WORD/ was/ that Hard Rock wasn't a mean ******
Anymore, that the doctors had bored...Read more of this...

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