Famous Incandescent Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Weather

by Ambrose Bierce
 Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be--
Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
With a record of unreason seldome paralleled on earth.
While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
From the coals that he'd preferred to the...Read more of this...

The Geniuses Among Us

by Marilyn L Taylor
 They take us by surprise, these tall perennials
that jut like hollyhocks above the canopy
of all the rest of us—bright testimonials
to the scale of human possibility.
They come to bloom for every generation,
blazing with extraordinary notions
from the taproots of imagination—
dazzling us with incandescent visions.
And soon, the things we never thought would happen
start to happen: the solid fences
of reality begin to soften,
crumbling...Read more of this...

Marriage

by Marianne Moore
 This institution,
perhaps one should say enterprise
out of respect for which
one says one need not change one's mind
about a thing one has believed in,
requiring public promises
of one's intention
to fulfill a private obligation:
I wonder what Adam and Eve
think of it by this time,
this firegilt steel
alive with goldenness;
how bright it shows --
"of circular traditions and impostures,
committing many spoils,"
requiring all one's criminal ingenuity
to...Read more of this...

Her Lips Are Copper Wire

by Jean Toomer
 whisper of yellow globes
gleaming on lamp-posts that sway
like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog

and let your breath be moist against me
like bright beads on yellow globes

telephone the power-house
that the main wires are insulate

(her words play softly up and down
dewy corridors of billboards)

then with your tongue remove the tape
and press your lips to mine
till they are incandescent...Read more of this...

Morning in the Burned House

by Margaret Atwood
 In the burned house I am eating breakfast.
You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,
yet here I am.

The spoon which was melted scrapes against 
the bowl which was melted also.
No one else is around.

Where have they gone to, brother and sister,
mother and father? Off along the shore,
perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers,

their dishes piled beside...Read more of this...

Black Rook In Rainy Weather

by Sylvia Plath
 On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky,...Read more of this...

North Haven

by Elizabeth Bishop
(In Memoriam: Robert Lowell)


I can make out the rigging of a schooner
a mile off; I can count
the new cones on the spruce. It is so still
the pale bay wears a milky skin; the sky
no clouds except for one long, carded horse1s tail.

The islands haven't shifted since last summer,
even if I like to pretend they have
--drifting, in a dreamy sort of...Read more of this...

Lillies in the Fire

by D. H. Lawrence
I

Ah, you stack of white lilies, all white and gold,
I am adrift as a sunbeam, and without form
Or having, save I light on you to warm
Your pallor into radiance, flush your cold

White beauty into incandescence: you
Are not a stack of white lilies to-night, but a white
And clustered star transfigured by me to-night,
And lighting these ruddy leaves like a star dropped...Read more of this...

Shooting Stars

by Victor Hugo
 {FOR MY LITTLE CHILD ONLY.} 
 
 ("Tas de feux tombants.") 
 
 {Bk. III. vii.} 


 See the scintillating shower! 
 Like a burst from golden mine— 
 Incandescent coals that pour 
 From the incense-bowl divine, 
 And around us dewdrops, shaken, 
 Mirror each a twinkling ray 
 'Twixt the flowers that awaken 
 In this...Read more of this...

I Loved..

by Alan Seeger
 I loved illustrious cities and the crowds 
That eddy through their incandescent nights. 
I loved remote horizons with far clouds 
Girdled, and fringed about with snowy heights. 
I loved fair women, their sweet, conscious ways 
Of wearing among hands that covet and plead 
The rose ablossom at the rainbow's base 
That bounds the world's desire and all its need....Read more of this...

Marys Song

by Sylvia Plath
 The Sunday lamb cracks in its fat.
The fat
Sacrifices its opacity. . . .

A window, holy gold.
The fire makes it precious,
The same fire

Melting the tallow heretics,
Ousting the Jews.
Their thick palls float

Over the cicatrix of Poland, burnt-out
Germany.
They do not die.

Grey birds obsess my heart,
Mouth-ash, ash of eye.
They settle. On the high

Precipice
That emptied one man into space
The ovens glowed like heavens, incandescent.

It...Read more of this...

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