Famous Illuminating Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Illuminating poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous illuminating poems. These examples illustrate what a famous illuminating poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Estep, Maggie
...so it looks like I've got a unicorn in my
crotch.
I stand there weaving through the air.
The strobe light is illuminating my pubic unicorn. Madonna's song Borderline
is pumping through the club's speaker system for the 5th time tonight:
"BORDERLINE BORDERLINE BORDERLINE/LOVE ME TIL I JUST CAN'T SEE."
And suddenly, I start to wonder: What does that mean anyway?
"LOVE ME TIL I JUST CAN'T SEE"
What?
Screw me so much my eyes pop out, I go blind, end up walk...Read more of this...
by
Verhaeren, Emile
...r eyes that fear no light, that they may be for me still franker when a quick and flashing ray strikes to their depths, illuminating them.
Oh! how beautiful and young still our life is when the clock rings out with its golden tone, and, coming closer, I brush you lightly and touch you, and a slow and gentle fever that neither desires to allay leads the sure and wondrous kiss from the hands to the forehead and from the forehead to the lips.
How I love you then, my bright bel...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...ncomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of
Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook-
lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
...Read more of this...
by
Dowson, Ernest
...put on coarse attire:
Because their comeliness was vanity.
And there they rest; they have serene insight
Of the illuminating dawn to be:
Mary's sweet Star dispels for them the night,
The proper darkness of humanity.
Calm, sad, secure; with faces worn and mild:
Surely their choice of vigil is the best?
Yea! for our roses fade, the world is wild;
But there, beside the altar, there is rest....Read more of this...
by
Verhaeren, Emile
...like an honoured friend.
He comes from gentle, radiant countries, with words brighter than the dews, in which to set, illuminating them, our feelings and our thoughts.
He seizes our being in a mad whirlwind; he lifts up the mind on giant pilasters; he pours into it the fire that makes the stars live; he brings the gift of being God suddenly.
And fevered transports and deep terrors— all serves his tragic will to make young again the blood of beauty in the veins of the worl...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...ed you
As one does when a corpse is being removed.
Children were crying in the darkened house.
A candle flared, illuminating the Mother of God. . .
The cold of an icon was on your lips, a death-cold
sweat
On your brow - I will never forget this; I will gather
To wail with the wives of the murdered streltsy (1)
Inconsolably, beneath the Kremlin towers.
[1935. Autumn. Moscow]
II
Silent flows the river Don
A yellow moon looks quietly on
Swankin...Read more of this...
by
Stevens, Wallace
...abates in taste,
564 Fickle and fumbling, variable, obscure,
565 Glozing his life with after-shining flicks,
566 Illuminating, from a fancy gorged
567 By apparition, plain and common things,
568 Sequestering the fluster from the year,
569 Making gulped potions from obstreperous drops,
570 And so distorting, proving what he proves
571 Is nothing, what can all this matter since
572 The relation comes, benignly, to its end?
573 So may the relation of each ...Read more of this...
by
Turner Smith, Charlotte
...bleeding world!--
Oh! could the time return, when thoughts like these
Spoil'd not that gay delight, which vernal Suns,
Illuminating hills, and woods, and fields,
Gave to my infant spirits--Memory come!
And from distracting cares, that now deprive
Such scenes of all their beauty, kindly bear
My fancy to those hours of simple joy,
When, on the banks of Arun, which I see
Make its irriguous course thro' yonder meads,
I play'd; unconscious then of future ill!
There (where, from ...Read more of this...
by
Moore, Marianne
...d shafts of the
sun,
split like spun
glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
into the crevices—
in and out, illuminating
the
turquoise sea
of bodies. The water drives a wedge
of iron throught the iron edge
of the cliff; whereupon the stars,
pink
rice-grains, ink-
bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green
lilies, and submarine
toadstools, slide each on the other.
All
external
marks of abuse are present on this
defiant edifice—
all the physical fe...Read more of this...
by
Leopardi, Giacomo
...urns,
I remember how, heavy with sorrow,
I climbed this hill to gaze on you,
And then as now you hung above those trees
Illuminating all. But to my eyes
Your face seemed clouded, temulous
From the tears that rose beneath my lids,
So painful was my life: and is, my
Dearest moon; its tenor does not change.
And yet, memory and numbering the epochs
Of my grief is pleasing to me. How welcome
In that youthful time -when hope's span is long,
And memory short -is the re...Read more of this...
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