Famous Illegible Poems by Famous Poets

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

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In Harm's Way

by Barry Tebb
 I was never a film buff, give me Widmark and Wayne any day

Saturday matin?es with Margaret Gardener still hold sway

As my memory veers backwards this temperate Boxing Day-

Westerns and war films and a blurred Maigret,

Coupled with a worn-out sixties Penguin Mallarm?-

How about that mix for a character trait?

Try as I may I can’t get my head round the manifold...Read more of this...

Private Eye

by Charles Simic
 To find clues where there are none,
That's my job now, I said to the
Dictionary on my desk. The world beyond
My window has grown illegible,
And so has the clock on the wall.
I may strike a match to orient myself

In the meantime, there's the heart
Stopping hush as the building
Empties, the elevators stop running,
The grains of dust stay put.
Hours of quiescent sleuthing
Before...Read more of this...

Shattered Head

by Adrienne Rich
 A life hauls itself uphill
through hoar-mist steaming
the sun's tongue licking
leaf upon leaf into stricken liquid
When? When? cry the soothseekers
but time is a bloodshot eye
seeing its last of beauty its own
foreclosure
a bloodshot mind
finding itself unspeakable
What is the last thought?
Now I will let you know?
or, Now I know?
(porridge of skull-splinters, brain tissue
mouth and throat membrane, cranial fluid) 

Shattered head on the...Read more of this...

All Circumstances are the Frame

by Emily Dickinson
 All Circumstances are the Frame
In which His Face is set --
All Latitudes exist for His
Sufficient Continent --

The Light His Action, and the Dark
The Leisure of His Will --
In Him Existence serve or set
A Force illegible....Read more of this...

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