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Famous In Your Face Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Field, Eugene
...-day!

Or, play that you sought this nestling-place
For your own sweet self, with that dual guise
Of your pretty mother in your face
And the look of that other in your eyes!
So the dear old loves shall live anew
As I hold my darling on my knee,
And I'll say "I love you" to you,
And you say "I love you" to me!
Oh, many a strange, true thing we say
And do when we pretend to play!...Read more of this...



by Muir, Edwin
...hoose the square. 

‘And let the circle run 
Its dull and fevered race. 
You, my dear, are one; 
Show your soul in your face; 
Maintain your place. 

‘Give, but have something to give. 
No man can want you all. 
Live, and learn to live. 
When all the barriers fall 
You are nothing at all.’...Read more of this...

by Hacker, Marilyn
...archway, a fresh-plastered staircase
led steeply upward. In a white room stood
a white-clad brass bed. Sunlight in your face

came from the tree-filled window. "You did good."
We laid crisp sheets we would inaugurate
that night, rescued from the grenier a wood-

en table we put under the window. Date 
our homes from that one, to which you returned
the last week of August, on a late

bus, in shorts, like a crew-cut, sunburned
bidasse. Sunburned, in shor...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...rd next, you haunt the plain,
And warble forth your oaten strain;
A lover now, with all the grace
Of that sweet passion in your face:
Then, calm'd to friendship, you assume
The gentle-looking Hertford's bloom,
As, with her Musidora, she,
(Her Musidora fond of thee)
Amid the long withdrawing vale,
Awakes the rival'd nightingale. 

Thine is the balmy breath of morn,
Just as the dew-bent rose is born;
And while meridian fervours beat,
Thine is the woodland dumb retreat;
But ...Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...d or gaze upward, listening, reading aloud,
talking of consonants, elision,
caught in the how, oblivious of why:
I look in your face, Jude,
neither frowning nor nodding,
opaque in the slant of dust-motes over the table:
a presence like a stone, if a stone were thinking
What I cannot say, is me. For that I came....Read more of this...



by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...s a sauce for a meal.
And with song in your heart and the meal in—its place,
There 'll be joy in your bosom and light in your face.
Just whistle a bit, if your heart be sore;
'Tis a wonderful balm for pain.
Just pipe some old melody o'er and o'er
Till it soothes like summer rain.
And perhaps 't would be best in a later day,
When Death comes stalking down the way,
To knock at your bosom and see if you 're fit,
Then, as you wait calmly, just whistle a bit.
...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
..."There's something in your face, Michael, I've seen it all the day;
There's something quare that wasn't there when first ye wint away. . . ."

"It's just the Army life, mother, the drill, the left and right,
That puts the stiffinin' in yer spine and locks yer jaw up tight. . . ."

"There's something in your eyes, Michael, an' how they stare and ...Read more of this...

by Gillan, Maria Mazziotti
...Panic in your face, you write questions
to ask him. When he arrives,
you are serene, your fear
unbetrayed. How unlike me you are.


After the dance,
I see your happiness; he holds
your hand. Though you barely speak,
your body pulses messages I can read


all too well. He kisses you goodnight,
his body moving toward yours, and yours
responding.<...Read more of this...

by Guillen, Rafael
...yes, not a friend.
It's a nightmare
of polite ritual wearing a frightwig.
Not fear. Fear is a door slammed in your face.
I'm speaking here of a labyrinth
of doors already closed, with assumed
reasons for being, or not being,
for categorizing bad luck
or good, bread, or an expression
— tenderness and panic and frigidity - for the children
growing up. And the silence.
And the cities, sparkling, empty.
and the mediocrity, like a hot
lava, spewed out ...Read more of this...

by Brecht, Bertolt
...notorious.

With their hands thus raised,
Raised against their brother,
They march insolently around you
And laugh in your face.
This is well known.

In your house
Lies are roared aloud.
But the truth
Must be silent.
Is it so?

Why do the oppressors praise you everywhere,
The oppressed accuse you?
The plundered
Point to you with their fingers, but
The plunderer praises the system
That was invented in your house!

Whereupon everyone sees you
Hiding the hem...Read more of this...

by Hoagland, Tony
...to be on board the Pequod,
with a mad one-legged captain
living for revenge.

Better to feel the salt wind
spitting in your face,
to hold your sharpened weapon high,

to see the glisten
of the beast beneath the waves.
What a relief it would be

to hear someone in the crew
cry out like a gull,
Oh Captain, Captain!
Where are we going now?...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...eneath you as straight as a beggar can spit:
With the sweat runnin' out o' your shirt-sleeves, an' the sun off the snow in your face,
An' 'arf o' the men on the drag-ropes to hold the old gun in 'er place -- 'Tss! 'Tss!
 For you all love the screw-guns . . .

Smokin' my pipe on the mountings, sniffin' the mornin' cool,
I climbs in my old brown gaiters along o' my old brown mule.
The monkey can say what our road was -- the wild-goat 'e knows where we passed.Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...he pours into his lay,--
"Love, love, love, and pure delight of living:
Winter is forgotten: here's a happy day!"
Fair in your face I read the flowery presage,
Snowy on your brow and rosy on your mouth:
Sweet in your voice I hear the season's message,--
Love, love, love, and Spring in the South!...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...n essay, or in one model photograph?
Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash?
Your whole existence going off in your face
in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography-
nothing like the three large volumes you envisioned.

Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance
here, some bolt of truth forking across the water,
an ultimate Light before all the lights go out,
dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage.
But if something does flash before your eye...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...lse a blank, heavens of glory now and then;
Gave him the magical genius touch; God-given power to gouge out, fling
Flat in your face a soul-thought -- Bing!
Twiddle your heart-strings in his clutch. "Bah!" said Smith, "let my body lie
 stripped to the buff in swinish shame,
If I can blaze in the radiant sky out of adoring stars my name.
Sober am I nonentitized; drunk am I more than half a god.
Well, let the flesh be sacrificed; spirit shall speak and shame the clo...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things