Famous Karl Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Garden In Chicago

...In the mid-city, under an oiled sky,
I lay in a garden of such dusky green
It seemed the dregs of the imagination.
Hedged round by elegant spears of iron fence
My face became a moon to absent suns.
A low heat beat upon my reading face;
There rose no roses in that gritty place
But blue-gray lilacs hung their tassels out.
Hard zinnias and ugly marigolds
And ...Read more of this...
by Shapiro, Karl


Conversation with Jeanne

...under accusation: That I am not up to my oeuvre,
That I do not demand enough from myself,
As I could have learned from Karl Jaspers,
That my scorn for the opinions of this age grows slack.

I roll on a wave and look at white clouds.

You are right, Jeanne, I don't know how to care about the salvation of my soul.
Some are called, others manage as well as they can.
I accept it, what has befallen me is just.
I don't pretend to the dignity of a wise old age.
Untranslatable into ...Read more of this...
by Milosz, Czeslaw

Manhole Covers

...The beauty of manhole covers--what of that?
Like medals struck by a great savage khan,
Like Mayan calendar stones, unliftable, indecipherable,
Not like the old electrum, chased and scored,
Mottoed and sculptured to a turn,
But notched and whelked and pocked and smashed
With the great company names
(Gentle Bethlehem, smiling United States).
This rustproof a...Read more of this...
by Shapiro, Karl

The Emperor's Return

...
 O' th' Romans, chosen king, crowned emperor, 
 Heaven's sword-bearer, monarch of Burgundy 
 And Arles—the tomb of Karl I dared profane, 
 But have repented me on bended knees 
 In penance 'midst the desert twenty years; 
 My drink the rain, the rocky herbs my food, 
 Myself a ghost the shepherds fled before, 
 And the world named me as among the dead. 
 But I have heard my country call—come forth, 
 Lifted the shroud—broken the sepulchre. 
 This hour is one when...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

The Judges Of The Little Box

...to Karl Max Ostojic

Why do you stare at the little box 
That in her emptiness 
Holds the whole world 

If the little box holds 
The world in her emptiness 
Then the antiworld 
Holds the little box in its antihand 

Who'll bite off the antiworld's antihand 
And on that hand 
Five hundred antifingers 

Do you believe 
You'll bite it off 
With your thirty-two tee...Read more of this...
by Popa, Vasko


The Olive Tree

...Save for a lusterless honing-stone of moon
The sky stretches its flawless canopy
Blue as the blue silk of the Jewish flag
Over the valley and out to sea.
It is bluest just above the olive tree.
You cannot find in twisted Italy
So straight a one; it stands not on a crag,
Is not humpbacked with bearing in scored stone,
But perfectly erect in my front yard,
O...Read more of this...
by Shapiro, Karl

This My Song Is Made For Kerensky

...s, Diogenes soap-box,
The old Elijah, Jeremiah, John-the-Baptist soap-box,
The Rousseau, Mirabeau, Danton soap-box,
The Karl Marx, Henry George, Woodrow Wilson soap-box.
We will make the wide earth safe for the soap-box,
The everlasting foe of beastliness and tyranny,
Platform of liberty: — Magna Charta liberty,
Andrew Jackson liberty, bleeding Kansas liberty,
New-born Russian liberty: —
Battleship of thought,
The round world over,
Loved by the red-hearted,
Loved by the broke...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel

To Brenda Williams ‘writing Against The Grain'

...It was Karl Shapiro who wrote in his ‘Defence of Ignorance’ how many poets

Go mad or seem to be so and the majority think we should all be in jail

Or mental hospital and you have ended up in both places - fragile as bone china,

Your pale skin taut, your fingers clasped tight round a cup, sitting in a pool

Of midnight light, your cats stretched flat on your desk...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

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