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Famous Jailed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...accident?
The farthest farmer in a field,
A gaunt plant grown, for seed, by farmers,
Has felt a longing, lorn urbanity
Jailed in his breast; and, just as I,
Has grunted, in his old perplexity,
A standing plea.
From the tar of the blazing square
The eyes shift, in their taciturn
And unavowing, unavailable sorrow.
Yet the intonation of a name confesses
Some secrets that they never meant
To let out to a soul; and what words would not dim
The bowed and weathered heads above the ...Read more of this...
by Jarrell, Randall



...Unmasked –
The spirits' face is a black hole
Swallowing the celestial beauty
Of the stars.

Caged –
The sentinel is crouched
Subsumed in seething pain
Not pain but anger of being guiltless
Yet ‘guilty’ for being in jail.

The cell –
No crime equals its greasy grey walls
Thickly dark with no grills for light
Till the eyes, sore, feel pain no more.

The sent...Read more of this...
by Gorry, Godfrey Mutiso
...d Lake's 
 blue Altar, pure water in Nevada sands' 
 brown wasteland scratched by tires

 Jerry Rubin arrested! Beaten, jailed,
 coccyx broken--
Leary out of action--"a public menace...
 persons of tender years...immature
 judgement...pyschiatric examination..."
i.e. Shut up or Else Loonybin or Slam

Leroi on bum gun rap, $7,000
 lawyer fees, years' negotiations--
SPOCK GUILTY headlined temporary, Joan Baez'
 paramour husband Dave Harris to Gaol
Dylan silent on politics, & sa...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...s, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted,jailed,in and
out of fights,in and aout
of my mind.
women were something
to screw and rail
at,i had no male
freinds,

I changed jobs and
cities,I hated holidays,
babies,history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbagemen,
english accents,spain,
france,italy,walnuts and
the color 
orange.
algebra angred me,
opera sickened me,
cha...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles
...Oh, what shall I do? I am wholly upset;
I am sure I 'll be jailed for a lunatic yet.
I 'll be out of a job—it's the thing to expect
When I 'm letting my duty go by with neglect.
You may judge the extent and degree of my plight
When I 'm thinking all day and a-dreaming all night,
And a-trying my hand at a rhyme on the sly,
All on account of a sparkling eye.
There are those who say men should be strong, well-a-...Read more of this...
by Laurence Dunbar, Paul



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Book: Reflection on the Important Things