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Famous Joan Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...ok, and saw a little duck,  And shot it right through the head, head, head.He carried it home to his old wife Joan,  And bade her a fire to make, make, make.To roast the little duck he had shot in the brook,  And he'd go and fetch the drake, drake, drake.The drake was a-swimming with his curly tail;  The little man made it his mark, mark, mark.He let off his gun, but he fired too soon,  And the drake flew away with a quack, qu...Read more of this...
by Goose, Mother



...e speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

Her father's euonymus shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o'clock news ...Read more of this...
by Betjeman, John
...t and woe;
I fostered them with love and care
 As if they were my own:
Now John, my son, is tall and fair,
 And dark is Joan.

My boy's a member of the Bar,
 My girl a nurse serene;
Yet when I think of what they are
 And what they might have been,
With shuddering I glimpse a hell
 Of black and bitter fruit . . .
Where John might be a criminal,
 And Joan--a prostitute....Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...at fall of even
Dim the sight and muffle all the sound.
And at the married fireside, sleep of soul and sleep of fancy,
Joan and Darby.
Silence of the world without a sound;
And beside the winter ******

Joan and Darby sit and dose and dream and wake -
Dream they hear the flowing, singing river,
See the berries in the island brake;
Dream they hear the weir,
See the gliding shallop mar the stream.
Hark! in your dreams do you hear?

Snow has filled the drifted forest;
Ice has b...Read more of this...
by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...Interr'd beneath this marble stone, 
Lie saunt'ring Jack and idle Joan. 
While rolling threescore years and one 
Did round this globe their courses run; 
If human things went ill or well; 
If changing empires rose or fell; 
The morning passed, the evening came, 
And found this couple still the same. 
They walk'd and eat, good folks: what then? 
Why then they walk'd and eat again: 
They soundly slept the night away: 
They d...Read more of this...
by de la Mare, Walter



...zz music station plays?
to give a ground of meaning to our pain? 


5.

The silence strips bare:
In Dreyer's Passion of Joan 

Falconetti's face, hair shorn, a great geography
mutely surveyed by the camera 

If there were a poetry where this could happen
not as blank space or as words 

stretched like skin over meaningsof a night through which two people
have talked till dawn. 


6.

The scream
of an illegitimate voice 

It has ceased to hear itself, therefore
it asks itself ...Read more of this...
by Rich, Adrienne
.....
"You are the answer.
You will outlive my husband and my father."
In that dream there was a city made of chains
where Joan was put to death in man's clothes
and the nature of the angels went unexplained,
no two made in the same species,
one with a nose, one with an ear in its hand,
one chewing a star and recording its orbit,
each one like a poem obeying itself,
performing God's functions,
a people apart.

"You are the answer,"
I said, and entered,
lying down on the gates of...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...se 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, & safe--
 having a baby, a man--
Cleaver shot at, jail'd, maddened, parole revoked,

Vietnam War flesh-heap grows higher,
 blood splashing down the mountains of bodies
 on to Cholon's sidewalks--
Blond boys in airplane seats fed technicolor
 Murderers advance w/ Death-chords
 Earplugs...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...or this her office colleagues came to doubt her
It was that look within her eye
Why did it always seem to say goodbye?

Joan her name was and at lunchtime
Solitary solitary
She would go and watch the pictures In the National Gallery
All alone all alone
This time with no friend beside her
She would go and watch the pictures
All alone.

Will she leave her office colleagues
Will she leave her evening pleasures
Toil within a friendly bureau
Running later in her leisure?
All alone...Read more of this...
by Smith, Stevie
...of trouble would it bring.

An educated woman is a danger.
Lock up your mate! Keep a submissive stranger

like Darby's Joan, content with church and Kinder,
not like that sainted Joan, burnt to a cinder.

Whether we wield a scepter or a mop
It's clear you fear that we may get on top.

And if we do -I say it without animus-
It's not from you we learned to be magnaminous....Read more of this...
by Kizer, Carolyn
...passion, 
Here lies after all the best wench in the nation. 

From the Rhine to the Po, from the Thames to the Rhone, 
Joanna or Janneton, Jinny or Joan, 
'Twas all one to her by what name she was known. 

For the idiom of words very little she heeded, 
Provided the matter she drove at succeeded, 
She took and gave languages just as she needed. 

So for kitchen and market, for bargain and sale, 
She paid English or Dutch or French down on the nail, 
But in telling a story sh...Read more of this...
by Prior, Matthew
...When Yankee soldiers reach the barricade
Then Joan of Arc gives each the accolade.

For she is there in armor clad, today,
All the young poets of the wide world say.

Which of our freemen did she greet the first,
Seeing him come against the fires accurst?

Mark Twain, our Chief, with neither smile nor jest,
Leading to war our youngest and our best.

The Yankee to King Arthur's court returns.
The sacred ...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel
...ruin all her race,
Than yield supremacy, an ace;
Assumed all rights divine, as grown
The church's head, like good Pope Joan;
Swore all the world should bow and skip,
At her almighty goodyship;
Anath'matized each unbeliever,
And vow'd to live and rule for ever.
Her servants humour'd every whim,
And own'd at once her power supreme;
Her follies nursed in all their stages,
For sake of liveries and wages;
In Stephen's Chapel then in state too
Set up her golden calf to pray to;
Pr...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John
...ved so far, how I have moved so little

And yet in essence stayed the same

Always passionate for the unattainable

For Joan Baez to make me her analyst,

To tour Ireland with Eddie and Finbar Furey

To be made a Chevalier des Palmes for translating Milosz.

I remember one road, many roads I did not take

And my heart lurches and my stomach turns

At the vertigo of mystery

At the simplicity of childhood

And its melancholy

At the silence of the moors

Beckoning, unreachable...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...XLII. ? ON GILES AND JOAN.         Who says that GILES and JOAN at discord be ? Th' observing neighbors no such mood can see. Indeed, poor Giles repents he married ever ; But that his Joan doth too.  And Giles would never, By his free-will, be in Joan's company : No more would Joan he should.  Giles riseth early, And having got him out of doors is glad ; The like is Joan : but t...Read more of this...
by Jonson, Ben
...
wide as a watermelon, 
but wise as birth, 
there is so much abundance 
in the people I have: 
Max, Lois, Joe, Louise, 
Joan, Marie, Dawn, 
Arlene, Father Dunne, 
and all in their short lives 
give to me repeatedly, 
in the way the sea 
places its many fingers on the shore, 
again and again 
and they know me, 
they help me unravel, 
they listen with ears made of conch shells, 
they speak back with the wine of the best region. 
They are my staff. 
They comfort me. 

They hear ...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...luctant pace,
Was tempted to the mystic place;
Then SUE, a merry laughing jade
A dimpled yielding blush betray'd;
While JOAN her chastity to shew
Wish'd "the bold knaves would serve her so,"
She'd "teach the rogues such wanton play!"
And well she could, she knew the way.

The FARMER, mute with jealous care,
Sat sullen, in his wicker chair;
Hating the noisy gamesome host
Yet, fearful to resign his post;
He envied all their sportive strife
But most he watch'd his blooming wife,...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Mary Darby
...t Homer, Plato, Verulam; even so 
With woman: and in arts of government 
Elizabeth and others; arts of war 
The peasant Joan and others; arts of grace 
Sappho and others vied with any man: 
And, last not least, she who had left her place, 
And bowed her state to them, that they might grow 
To use and power on this Oasis, lapt 
In the arms of leisure, sacred from the blight 
Of ancient influence and scorn. 
At last 
She rose upon a wind of prophecy 
Dilating on the future; 'ev...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...sks 
Hearts just as hot - hotter perhaps than those 
Whose owners now abandon hats and hose? 
Who has not wept for Lady Joan or Jill 
Loving against her noble parent's will 
A handsome guardsman, who to her alarm 
Feels her hand kissed behind a potted palm 
At Lady Ivry's ball the dreadful night 
Before his regiment goes off to fight;
And see him the next morning, in the park,
Complete in busbee, marching to embark.
I had read freely, even as a child,
Not only Meredith and Os...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer
...is nipped and ways be foul, 
Then nightly sings the staring owl, 
Tu-who; 
Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note, 
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. 

When all aloud the wind doth blow, 
And coughing drowns the parson's saw, 
And birds sit brooding in the snow, 
And Marian's nose looks red and raw 
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, 
Then nightly sings the staring owl, 
Tu-who; 
Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note, 
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot....Read more of this...
by de la Mare, Walter

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry