Famous Inches Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Inches poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous inches poems. These examples illustrate what a famous inches poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...pleas'd with the chimes,
The foolish creature thinks he climbs:
But here or there, turn wood or wire,
He never gets two inches higher.
So fares it with those merry blades,
That frisk it under Pindus' shades.
In noble songs, and lofty odes,
They tread on stars, and talk with gods;
Still dancing in an airy round,
Still pleas'd with their own verses' sound;
Brought back, how fast soe'er they go,
Always aspiring, always low....Read more of this...
by
Prior, Matthew
...ng side.
For years I lived in the gardens
Of fire and flames robed time in
Memory and desire, icicles climbed
Six inches up the kitchen window
Then six inches down and six feet
Of snow lay against the POW’s as they
Marched with hefted shovels from
Knostrop’s cottage camp with curling
Smoke signalling from crooked stacks.
2
Yards from where I lay Hendry and
Moore sat in their attic conceiving
The Apocalypse and my natal stars
Were their ineffable words.
...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...Heat waves shimmering
one or two inches
above the dead grass....Read more of this...
by
Basho, Matsuo
...paque
than absolute transparency.
Look--my feet don't hit the marble!
Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
You think I'm not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you'll burn....Read more of this...
by
Atwood, Margaret
...es
art nourishment
prolific like sin
to the serpent edge of youth
once my head rolled in the streets
motors crashing by
inches from my intoxication
a fleshful laugh echoed in time
a mad initiation as part of the door
to the unrepentant lyric
heathen apprentices
i cracked the demon-s egg
tattooed pandora-s eye
with rage, blissillusion
madness conceived
a life, my methadone(placebo)...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Billy Jno
...are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more t...Read more of this...
by
Berry, Wendell
...ip of lit flames
--remember them
from school,
how they were supposed
to teach us something?--
waxy light hurrying
inches away from the phantom
smudge of us, vague
in spattered glass. Then
daylight's soft charcoal
lusters stone walls
and we ascend to what
passes for brightness,
this February,
scumbled sky
above graduated zones
of decline:
dead rowhouses,
charred windows'
wet frames
around empty space,
a few chipboard polemics
nailed over the gaps,
speech...Read more of this...
by
Doty, Mark
...e was one pile of hundred-foot
lengths. There was also a box of scraps. The scraps were
in odd sizes ranging from six inches to a couple of feet.
There was a loudspeaker on the side of the building and
soft music was coming out. It was a cloudy day and seagulls
were circling high overhead.
Behind the stream were big bundles of trees and bushes.
They were covered with sheets of patched canvas. You could
see the tops and roots sticking out the ends of the bundles.
I...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...inutes.
The trout in those telephone booths were good fellows.
There were a lot of young cutthroat trout six to nine inches
long, perfect pan size for local calls. Sometimes there
were a few fellows, eleven inches or so--for the long dis-
tance calls.
I've always liked cutthroat trout. They put up a good fight,
running against the bottom and then broad jumping. Under
their throats they fly the orange banner of Jack the Ripper.
Also in the creek were a few stubborn...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...ernoon, they went fishing
below the falls and caught half a dozen trout, good ones, too,
from sixteen to twenty-three inches long.
"That was June 13, 1805.
"No, I don't think Lewis would have understood it if the
Missouri River had suddenly begun to look like a Deanna Dur-
bin movie, like a chorus girl who wanted to go to college, "
Trout Fishing in America said.
IN THE CALIFORNIA BUSH
I've come home from Trout Fishing in America, the highway
bent its l...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...no private life.
If I'm in my cups the whole town knows by breakfast
and no child will ever call me Papa
I am eighteen inches high.
I am no bigger than a partridge.
I am your evil eye
and no child will ever call me Papa.
Stop this Papa foolishness,
she cried. Can you perhaps
spin straw into gold?
Yes indeed, he said,
that I can do.
He spun the straw into gold
and she gave him her necklace
as a small reward.
When the king saw what she had done
he put her in a bigger room of s...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...uanaco
****, dolphin ****, aphid ****, baboon **** (that leopards
induce), albatross ****, red-headed woodpecker (nine
inches long) ****, tern ****, hedgehog ****, panda ****,
seahorse ****, and the **** of the wasteful gallinule....Read more of this...
by
Ammons, A R
...the dark with drooping eyes by the worst-suffering and the most restless,
I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them,
The restless sink in their beds—they fitfully sleep.
Now I pierce the darkness—new beings appear,
The earth recedes from me into the night,
I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not the earth is beautiful.
I go from bedside to bedside—I sleep close with the other sleepers, each in turn,
I dream in my dream all the dream...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...we know each other, crack and flaw,
Like two irregular stones that fit together.
Yet still good-by, because we live by inches
And only sometimes see the full dimension.
Your stature's one I want to memorize--
Your whole level of being, to impose
On any other comers, man or woman.
I'd ask them that they carry what they are
With your particular bearing, as you wear
The flaws that make you both yourself and human....Read more of this...
by
Rich, Adrienne
...her's tails, till just the Tough survive.
Yet on this stern and Spartan fare so-rapidly they grow,
That some attain six inches by the melting of the snow.
Then when the tundra glows to green and ****** heads appear,
They burrow down and are not seen until another year."
"A toughish yarn," laughed Major Brown, "as well you may admit.
I'd like to see this little beast before I swallow it."
"'Tis easy done," said Deacon White, "Ho! Barman, haste and bring
Us forth some pickled ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...It's too nice a day to read a novel set in England.
We're within inches of the perfect distance from the sun,
the sky is blueberries and cream,
and the wind is as warm as air from a tire.
Even the headstones in the graveyard
Seem to stand up and say "Hello! My name is..."
It's enough to be sitting here on my porch,
thinking about Kermit Roosevelt,
following the course of an ant,
or walking out into the yard with a cordl...Read more of this...
by
Berman, David
...as fixed. And all seats, even
Those almost at the ceiling, which were driven
Behind the highest gallery, were sold.
The inches of the theatre went for gold.
Herr Altgelt was a shadow worn so thin
With work, he hardly printed black behind
The candle. He and his old violin
Made up one person. He was not unkind,
But dazed outside his playing, and the rind,
The pine and maple of his fiddle, guarded
A part of him which he had quite discarded.
It woke in the silence of frost-bright...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...as the story of my dream,
but even asleep I was shocked out of narrative
by your face, the physical fact of your face:
inches from mine, smooth-shaven, loving, alert.
Why so difficult, remembering the actual look
of you? Without a photograph, without strain?
So when I saw your unguarded, reliable face,
your unmistakable gaze opening all the warmth
and clarity of you—warm brown tea—we held
each other for the time the dream allowed.
Bless you. You came back so I could see yo...Read more of this...
by
Doty, Mark
...The time I like best is 6am
when the snow is 6 inches deep
which I'm yet to discover
'cause I'm under the covers
fast, fast asleep....Read more of this...
by
McGough, Roger
...became
A Sister of Mercy when she was old enough.
She must be thirty-one; she was a year
Older than I, and about four inches taller.
I used to envy both those advantages
Back in those days. Anyway, I was struck
Right from the start by the sea-weed intricacy,
The fine-haired, silken-threaded filiations
That wove, like Belgian lace, throughout the head.
But this last week it seems I have found myself
Looking beyond, or through, individual trees
At the dense, clustered woodlan...Read more of this...
by
Hecht, Anthony
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