Famous Instantaneous Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Shells

by Kathleen Raine
 Reaching down arm-deep into bright water 
I gathered on white sand under waves 
Shells, drifted up on beaches where I alone 
Inhabit a finite world of years and days. 
I reached my arm down a myriad years 
To gather treasure from the yester-milliennial sea-floor, 
Held in my fingers forms shaped on the day of creation. 

Building their beauty in...Read more of this...

Dream Song 115: Her properties like her of course and frisky and new

by John Berryman
 Her properties, like her of course & frisky & new:
a stale cake sold to kids, a 7-foot weed
inside in the Great Neck night,
a record ('great'), her work all over as u-
sual rejected. She odd in a bakery.
The owner stand beside her

and she have to sell to the brother & sister jumping
without say 'One week old.' Her indifference
to the fate...Read more of this...

A Distance From The Sea

by Weldon Kees
 To Ernest Brace

"And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was
about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto
me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and
write them not." --REVELATIONS, x, 4.

That raft we rigged up, under the water,
Was just the item: when he walked,
With his robes blowing, dark against the sky,
It...Read more of this...

Canzone XVIII

by Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE XVIII. Qual più diversa e nova. HE COMPARES HIMSELF TO ALL THAT IS MOST STRANGE IN CREATION.  Whate'er most wild and newWas ever found in any foreign land,If viewed and valued true,Most likens me 'neath Love's transforming hand.Whence the bright day breaks through,Alone and consortless, a bird there flies,Read more of this...

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