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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...crying alone; thin ragged lengths of cloud
Drifted in bars across the sun. There on the shore
The crowd's response was instantaneous. He
Handled it well, I thought--the gait, the tilt of the head, just right.
Long streaks of light were blinding on the waves.
And then we knew our work well worth the time:
The days of sawing, fitting, all those nails,
The tiresome rehearsals, considerations of execution.
But if you want a miracle, you have to work for it,
Lay your plans carefu...Read more of this...
by
Kees, Weldon
...but if againThe gold rays of the living sun appear,My slow blood stiffens, instantaneous, strange;Within me and without I feel the frozen change! Another fount of fameSprings in Epirus, which, as bards have told,Kindles the lurking flame,And the live quenches, while itself is cold.Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...ng.
I guess: she'll take the National Book Award
presently, with like flare & indifference.
A massive, unpremeditated, instantaneous
transfer of solicitude from the thing to the creature
Henry sometimes felt.
A state of chancy mind when facts stick out
frequent was his, while that this shrugging girl,
keen, do not quit, he knelt.
(Having so swiftly, and been by, let down.)...Read more of this...
by
Berryman, John
...presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to th...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...scenes of war;
Great Howe had sweetly in the lap
Of Loring taken out his nap;
When all th' encircling hills around
With instantaneous breastworks crown'd,
With pointed thunders met his sight,
Like magic, rear'd the former night.
Each summit, far as eye commands,
Shone, peopled with rebellious bands.
Aloft their tow'ring heroes rise,
As Titans erst assail'd the skies;
Leagued in superior force to prove
The sceptred hand of British Jove.
Mounds piled on hills ascended fair
With...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...year to year
From first to last they remain in their continuous present.
The helix revolves like a timeless thought,
Instantaneous from apex to rim
Like a dance whose figure is limpet or murex,
cowrie or golden winkle.
They sleep on the ocean floor like humming-tops
Whose music is the mother-of-pearl octave of the rainbow,
Harmonious shells that whisper forever in our ears,
The world that you inhabit has not yet been created....Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...limmered weak --
But gleamed and struck at once or oak or man,
And left not space for Time to wave his wing
Betwixt the instantaneous flash and stroke:
While yet the needs of life were brave and fierce
And did not hide their deeds behind their words,
And logic came not 'twixt desire and act,
And Want-and-Take was the whole Form of life:
While Love had fires a-burning in his veins,
And hidden Hate could flash into revenge:
Ere yet young Trade was 'ware of his big thews
Or drea...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
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