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Famous Honed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...It's wonderful how I jog
on four honed-down ivory toes
my massive buttocks slipping
like oiled parts with each light step.

I'm to market. I can smell
the sour, grooved block, I can smell
the blade that opens the hole
and the pudgy white fingers

that shake out the intestines
like a hankie. In my dreams 
the snouts drool on the marble,
suffering children, suffering flies,

suffering the con...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip



...Light above pines and the guttural gorge,
The hawk comes.
His wing
Scythes down another day, his motion 
Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear
The crashless fall of stalks of Time.

The head of each stalk is heavy with the gold of our error.

Look!Look!he is climbing the last light
Who knows neither Time nor error, and under
Whose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swings
Into shadow.

Long now,
The last thrush is still, the last bat
Now cruises in his sharp hierogly...Read more of this...
by Warren, Robert Penn
...er skin.
We soothed him till his pain was not so raw.
At last he offered us a watery grin,
And then I took my billhook, honed the blade
And went outside and slashed in fury with it
Till not a nettle in that fierce parade
Stood upright any more. And then I lit
A funeral pyre to burn the fallen dead,
But in two weeks the busy sun and rain
Had called up tall recruits behind the shed:
My son would often feel sharp wounds again....Read more of this...
by Scannell, Vernon
...ad met
a girl named Hope who became my best friend. Hope and I were flunking math
class so we became speed freaks. This honed our algebra skills and we quickly
became whiz kids. For about 5 minutes. Then, our brains started to fry
and we were just teenage speed freaks.

Then, we decided to to seek gainful employment.

We got hired on as part time maids at the Holiday Inn while a maid strike
was happening. We were scab maids on speed and we were coming to clean
your room.

We ...Read more of this...
by Estep, Maggie
...t winter he had been too ill
to work. The scythe would dull
so much more quickly in my hands
than his, and was so often honed,
that while the blade
grew less and less a blade
the whetstone had entirely disappeared
and a lop-eared
coney was now curled inside the cap.
He whistled to me through the gap

in his front teeth;
'I was wondering, chief,
if you happen to know the name
of the cauliflowers in your cold-frame
that you still hope to dibble
in this unenviable
bit of ground?...Read more of this...
by Muldoon, Paul



...ife

In her volcanoes
In her orchards
Seeking solidity and measure 
Clasping her most tender flesh
Straining every fine-honed fiber

The ever-patient woman
Slowly
gives herself
light....Read more of this...
by Chedid, Andree
...ein and Vamik Voltan



What darknesses have you lit up for me

What depths of infinite space plumbed

With your finely honed probes

What days of unending distress lightened 

With your wisdom, skills and jouissance?

Conquistadores of the unconscious

For three decades how often have I come to you

And from your teachings gathered the manna

Of meaning eluding me alone in my northern eyrie?

Chance or God’s guidance – being a poet I chose the latter – 

Brought me to dip my...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...other perennials would you plant,

My prodigals, my explorers
Tossing and turning in the dark

For those remote, finely honed bees,
The December stars?



Had to get through me elsewhere.
Woe to bone

That stood in their way.
Woe to each morsel of flesh.

White ants
In a white anthill.

The rustle of their many feet
Scurrying--tiptoing too.

Gravedigger ants.
Village-idiot ants.



This is the last summoning.
Solitude--as in the beginning.

A zero burped by a bigger zero--
It...Read more of this...
by Simic, Charles
...ague, gray
shape of wolves
turned solid, out of the darkness and the snow, and set ravenously
to licking blood from the honed steel.
the double-edge of the knives
so lacerated the tongues of the starved beasts
that their own blood poured
copiously forth
to replenish the dog's blood, and they ate
more furiously than before, while Knatiuk laughed,
and held his sides
laughing.

And I laughed also, perhaps in relief that Providence had delivered us
yet again, or perhaps--under co...Read more of this...
by Hall, Donald

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things