Famous Intermission Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Cellist

by Galway Kinnell
 At intermission I find her backstage
still practicing the piece coming up next.
She calls it the "solo in high dreary."
Her bow niggles at the string like a hand
stroking skin it never wanted to touch.
Probably under her scorn she is sick
that she can't do better by it. As I am,
at the dreary in me, such as the disparity
between all the tenderness...Read more of this...

The Gateway

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 Now the heart sings with all its thousand voices 
To hear this city of cells, my body, sing. 
The tree through the stiff clay at long last forces 
Its thin strong roots and taps the secret spring. 

And the sweet waters without intermission 
Climb to the tips of its green tenement; 
The breasts have borne the grace of their...Read more of this...

I Hear America Singing

by Walt Whitman
 I HEAR America singing, the varied carols I hear; 
Those of mechanics—each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong; 
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam, 
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work; 
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat—the deckhand singing...Read more of this...

Proclamation Without Pretension

by Tristan Tzara
 Art is going to sleep for a new world to be born
"ART"-parrot word-replaced by DADA,
PLESIOSAURUS, or handkerchief

The talent THAT CAN BE LEARNED makes the
poet a druggist TODAY the criticism
of balances no longer challenges with resemblances

Hypertrophic painters hyperaes-
theticized and hypnotized by the hyacinths
of the hypocritical-looking muezzins

CONSOLIDATE THE HARVEST OF EX-
ACT CALCULATIONS

Hypodrome of immortal guarantees: there is
no such thing as importance...Read more of this...

I Hear America Singing

by Walt Whitman
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, 
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, 
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, 
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, 
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand...Read more of this...

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