Famous Knockout Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Balloon Faces

...oon and the wind—this will be about all, this will be about all.

Eaters, go to it; your mazuma pays for it all; it’s a knockout, a classy knockout—and payday always comes.
The moths in the marigolds will do for me, the half-moon, the wishing wind and the little mile of balloon spots on wires—this will be about all, this will be about all....Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl


Lost

...rm-deep in the snow.
Beaten back to my corner, how can I hope to win?
 And there is the blizzard waiting to give me the knockout blow.
Oh, I'm so warm and sleepy! No more hunger and pain.
 Just to rest for a moment; was ever rest such a joy?
Ha! what was that? I'll swear it, somebody shook me again;
 Somebody seemed to whisper: "Fight to the last, my boy."
Fight! That's right, I must struggle. I know that to rest means death;
 Death, but then what does death mean? --ease from...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Operation Memory

...We were smoking some of this knockout weed when
Operation Memory was announced. To his separate bed
Each soldier went, counting backwards from a hundred
With a needle in his arm. And there I was, in the middle
Of a recession, in the middle of a strange city, between jobs
And apartments and wives. Nobody told me the gun was loaded.

We'd been drinking since early afternoon. I was loaded....Read more of this...
by Lehman, David

Queen Matilda

...were dead,
But the folks wasn't keen upon having a queen, 
So they went and crowned Stephen instead.

This 'ere were a knockout for Tilda,
The notion she could not absorb
To lose at one blow both the crown and the throne,
To say naught of the sceptre and orb.

So she summoned her friends in t'West Country
From Bristol, Bath, Gloucester and Frome,
And also a lot of relations from Scotland, 
Who'd come South and wouldn't go home.

The East Counties rallied round Stephen, 
Wher...Read more of this...
by Edgar, Marriott

Woodchucks

...Gassing the woodchucks didn't turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange
was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone,
but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range.

Next morning they turned up again, no worse
for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes
and state-store Scotch, all of us up to sc...Read more of this...
by Kumin, Maxine


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