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Famous Insistence Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Doty, Mark
...hich seems to he the point:

a spectacle, saints
and Stars and Stripes
billowing in hillocks
of concrete. Stubborn

insistence on rendering
invisibles solid. What's
more frankly actual
than cement? Surfaced,

here, in pure decor:
even the railings
curlicued with rows
of identical whelks,

even the lampposts
and birdhouses,
and big encrusted urns
wagging with lunar flowers!

A little dizzy,
the world he's made,
and completely
unapologetic, high

on a hill in Dickeyvill...Read more of this...



by Berryman, John
...It's buried at a distance, on my insistence, buried.
Weather's severe there, which it will not mind.
I miss it.
O happies before & during & between the times it got married.
I hate the love of leaving it behind,
deteriorating & hopeless that.

The great Uh climbed above me, far above me,
doing the north face, or behind it. Does He love me?
over, & flout.
Goodness...Read more of this...

by Clampitt, Amy
...a stone at dawn
cold water in the basin
these walls' rough plaster
imageless
after the hammering
of so much insistence
on the need for naming
after the travesties
that passed as faces,
grace: the unction
of sheer nonexistence
upwelling in this
hyacinthine freshet
of the unnamed
the faceless...Read more of this...

by Bowers, Edgar
...strangers,
Sustained her, till the vanished boy next door
And her ordeal seemed fiction, and the true
Her mother’s firm insistence she was the mother
And the neighbors’ acquiescence. So she taught school,
Walking a mile each way to ride the street car—
First books of the Aeneid known by heart,
French, and the French Club Wednesday afternoon;
Then summer replacement typist in an office,
Her sister’s family moving in with them,
Depression years and she the only earner.
...Read more of this...

by Varos, Dimitris
...I am a waterfall in the desert.
A rain from a cloudless sky. 
A well known but unborn child. 
An insistence experience 
that you never had. 

I play mind games with your brain. 
When you strike the keys and remember the sea 
I come as indefinable memory. 
When you look at your watch 
and the time has passed
you feel me like a fleeting hallucination.

I play mind games with your brain.
I’m nesting behind your eyes.
I’m ranging thr...Read more of this...



by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...d he must win withal, to do that work,
Good fortitude, clean wisdom, and strong skill. 

XXI 

To curse the chilled insistence of the dawn
Because the free gleam lingers; to defraud
The constant opportunity that lives
Unchallenged in all sorrow; to forget
For this large prodigality of gold
That larger generosity of thought, -- 
These are the fleshly clogs of human greed,
The fundamental blunders of mankind. 

XXII 

Forebodings are the fiends of Recreance;
The master ...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...window
and immediately there is an echo

off in the distance,
then one from the backyard fence,
then one, with horrible insistence,

grates like a wet match 
from the broccoli patch,
flares,and all over town begins to catch.

Cries galore
come from the water-closet door,
from the dropping-plastered henhouse floor,

where in the blue blur 
their rusting wives admire,
the roosters brace their cruel feet and glare

with stupid eyes
while from their beaks there rise
the uncon...Read more of this...

by Wilbur, Richard
...-reports which give the population
As zero are, of course, not to be trusted,
Save as reflecting the natives' flustered insistence
That they do not count, as well as their modest horror
Of letting one's sex be known in so many words.
The uniform grey of the nondescript buildings, the absence
Of churches or comfort-stations, have given observers
An odd impression of ostentatious meanness,
And it must be said of the citizens (muttering by
In their ratty sheepskins, shying a...Read more of this...

by Nicolson, Adela Florence Cory
...
   Faintly the lingering light touches the edge of the sea,
   Sadly the Music of Waves, drifts, faint as an Anthem's insistence,
   Heard in the aisles of a dream, over the sandhills, to me.

   Now that the Lights are reversed, and the Singing changed into sighing,
   Now that the wings of our fierce, fugitive passion are furled,
   Take I unto myself, all alone in the light that is dying,
   Much of the sorrow that lies hid at the Heart of the World.

   Sad am I...Read more of this...

by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...
"Oh, lover mine, soul of my soul,
For you I too am sighing.
"But One ordained when we were born,
In spite of Love's insistence,
That Night might only view the Morn
Adoring at a distance."
But as she spoke the jealous Sun
Across the heavens panted.
"Oh, whining fools," he cried, "have done;
[Pg 100]Your wishes shall be granted!"
He hurled his flaming lances far;
The twain stood unaffrighted—
And Midnight and the ...Read more of this...

by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...lover mine, soul of my soul, 
For you I too am sighing."

"But One ordained when we were born, 
In spite of love's insistence, 
That night might only view the Morn 
Adoring at a distance."

But as she spoke, the jealous Sun 
Across the heavens panted; 
"Oh, whining fools," he cried, "have done, 
Your wishes shall be granted."

He hurled his flaming lances far; 
The twain stood unaffrighted, 
And Midnight and the Morning Star 
Lay down in death united....Read more of this...

by Nicolson, Adela Florence Cory
...I hear from yonder Temple in the distance
     Whose roof with obscene carven Gods is piled,
   Reiterated with a sad insistence
     Sobs of, perhaps, some immolated child.

   Strange rites here, where the archway's shade is deeper,
     Are consummated in the river bed;
   Parias steal the rotten railway sleeper
     To burn the bodies of their cholera dead.

   But yet, their lust, their hunger, cannot shame them
     Goaded by fierce desire, that flays and sti...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things