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Famous Insisting Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Sexton, Anne
...ear
that the ambulance ran like a hearse
with its siren blowing on suicide—
Dinn, dinn, dinn!—
a noon whistle that kept insisting on life
all the way through the traffic lights?

I have come back
but disorder is not what it was.
I have lost the trick of it!
The innocence of it!
That fellow-patient in his stovepipe hat
with his fiery joke, his manic smile—
even he seems blurred, small and pale.
I have come back,
recommitted,
fastened to the wall like a bathroom plunger...Read more of this...



by Tebb, Barry
...r>

So Lawrence-like and yet not, grandad

A strict Methodist who read only a vast Bible

Hunched in his fireside chair insisting

On chapel three times on Sundays.

Only in retirement did joy and wisdom

Enter him, abandoning chapel he took

To the Friends or Quakers as they called them then

And somehow at seventy the inner light

Consumed him.

Gruff but kind was my impression:

He would take me for walks

Along abandoned railways to the shutdown

Pipeworks where m...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...hrows down in front of us is not bar
Our passage to our journey's end for good,
But just to ask us who we think we are

Insisting always on our own way so.
She likes to halt us in our runner tracks,
And make us get down in a foot of snow
Debating what to do without an ax.

And yet she knows obstruction is in vain:
We will not be put off the final goal
We have it hidden in us to attain,
Not though we have to seize earth by the pole

And, tired of aimless circling in on...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...s a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hoodwink,
``I am fain to keep still in abeyance, (I laugh as I think)
``Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst
``E'en the Giver in one gift.---Behold, I could love if I durst!
``But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake
``God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love's sake.
``---What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? when doors great and small,
``Nine-and-ninety flew ope at ...Read more of this...

by Gilbert, Jack
...e morning, 
we find a morning that comes just after darkness. 
We can break through marriage into marriage. 
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond 
affection and wade mouth-deep into love. 
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars. 
But going back toward childhood will not help. 
The village is not better than Pittsburgh. 
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh. 
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound 
of raccoon tong...Read more of this...



by Larkin, Philip
...Lonely in Ireland, since it was not home, 
Strangeness made sense. The salt rebuff of speech, 
Insisting so on difference, made me welcome: 
Once that was recognised, we were in touch 

Their draughty streets, end-on to hills, the faint 
Archaic smell of dockland, like a stable, 
The herring-hawker's cry, dwindling, went 
To prove me separate, not unworkable. 

Living in England has no such excuse: 
These are my customs and establishments 
It woul...Read more of this...

by Hood, Thomas
...ongenial souls, 
And thus she murmur'd at my ear, 
"My love, we're out of coals! 

"That Mister Bond has call'd again, 
Insisting on his rent; 
And all the Todds are coming up 
To see us, out of Kent -- 
I quite forgot to tell you John 
Has had a tipsy fall -- 
I'm sure there's something going on 
WIth that vile Mary Hall! 

"Miss Bell has bought the sweetest silk, 
And I have bought the rest -- 
Of course, if we go out of town, 
Southend will be the best. 
I really think...Read more of this...

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