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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Inspiration From A Visitation Of My Muse

by Barry Tebb
 Memories bursting like tears or waves

On some lonely Adriatic shore

Beating again and again

Threshings of green sea foam

Flecked like the marble Leonardo

Chipped for his ‘Moses’.

And my tears came as suddenly

In that dream, criss-crossed

With memory and desire.

Grandad Nicky had worked

Down the pits for a pittance

To bring up his six children

But nothing left over for more

Than a few nuts and an orange

For...Read more of this...

Tear It Down

by Jack Gilbert
 We find out the heart only by dismantling what 
the heart knows. By redefining the 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...Read more of this...

On a Tree Fallen Across the Road

by Robert Frost
 (To hear us talk)

The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
Throws 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...Read more of this...

Flee On Your Donkey

by Anne Sexton
 Because there was no other place
to flee to,
I came back to the scene of the disordered senses,
came back last night at midnight,
arriving in the thick June night
without luggage or defenses,
giving up my car keys and my cash,
keeping only a pack of Salem cigarettes
the way a child holds on to a toy.
I signed myself in where a stranger
puts the inked-in...Read more of this...

The Sun Was Slumbering in the West

by Thomas Hood
 The sun was slumbering in the West, 
My daily labors past; 
On Anna's soft and gentle breast 
My head reclined at last; 
The darkness closed around, so dear 
To fond congenial 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...Read more of this...

The Importance Of Elsewhere

by Philip Larkin
 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...Read more of this...

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