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Famous Metallic Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Lowell, Amy
...tal on their backs.
Barred fish,
Striped fish,
Uneven disks of fish,
Slip, slide, whirl, turn,
And never touch.
Metallic blue fish,
With fins wide and yellow and swaying
Like Oriental fans,
Hold the sun in their bellies
And glow with light:
Blue brilliance cut by black bars.
An oblong pane of straw-coloured shimmer,
Across it, in a tangent,
A smear of rose, black, silver.
Short twists and upstartings,
Rose-black, in a setting of bubbles:
Sunshine playing betwe...Read more of this...



by Ginsberg, Allen
...atural eyeball--

Sacramento valley rivercourse's Chinese 
 dragonflames licking green flats north-hazed
 State Capitol metallic rubble, dry checkered fields
 to Sierras- past Reno, Pyramid 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 examinati...Read more of this...

by Doty, Mark
...Glassmakers,
at century's end,
compounded metallic lusters

in reference
to natural sheens (dragonfly
and beetle wings,

marbled light on kerosene)
and invented names
as coolly lustrous

as their products'
scarab-gleam: Quetzal,
Aurene, Favrile.

Suggesting,
respectively, the glaze
of feathers,

that sun-shot fog
of which halos
are composed,

and -- what?
What to make of Favrile,
Tiffany's term
...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...keltering along the aisle
king of the upper world for one short while

and all the shaking rolling raucous gait
of this metallic serpent sizzling through
the maze of shoppy streets (o dizzy state)
sprinkled my heart-strings with ambrosial dew
(well tell a lie but such a wish will do)
and i'd be gloried as if leviathan
said hop on nip and sped me to japan

so back to earth - the tram that netley day
would be quite sober bumbling through the town
the rush-hour gone and night st...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...as a joke one night
pick up your bed and walk
to washington – sleep
your damned sleep in its streets
so that one bright metallic morning
it can wake up to the stench
and fermentation of flesh
the gutrot of nerves – the blood’s
green effervescence so active
your skin has a job to keep it all in

isn’t that what things with the palsy
are supposed to do – lovely lake
give the world the miracle it waits for
what a laugh that would be

especially if washington lost its temper
and ...Read more of this...



by Dickinson, Emily
...It came at last but prompter Death
Had occupied the House --
His pallid Furniture arranged
And his metallic Peace --

Oh faithful Frost that kept the Date
Had Love as punctual been
Delight had aggrandized the Gate
And blocked the coming in....Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...fixed your clothes, 

as if I were your mother. Remember me 
combing your springy black hair, ringlets 
that seemed metallic, glittering; 

remember me dressing you, my seventy year 
old mother who was my last dollbaby, 
giving you too late what your youth had wanted. 


3.

What is this mask of skin we wear, 
what is this dress of flesh, 
this coat of few colors and little hair? 

This voluptuous seething heap of desires 
and fears, squeaking mice turned up 
in a...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...'d its bound, 
Earth's solid base, huge promontories bore; 
Curb'd OCEAN roar'd, clasp'd by the rocky shore; 
And midst metallic fires, translucent rivers ran. 

All nature own'd th'OMNIPOTENT's command! 
Luxuriant blessings deck'd the vast domain; 
HE bade the budding branch expand; 
And from the teeming ground call'd forth the cherish'd grain; 
Salubrious springs from flinty caverns drew; 
Enamell'd verdure o'er the landscape threw; 
HE taught the scaly host to glide 
S...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...p 
Belched fire and rolling smoke; the rest entire 
Shone with a glossy scurf--undoubted sign 
That in his womb was hid metallic ore, 
The work of sulphur. Thither, winged with speed, 
A numerous brigade hastened: as when bands 
Of pioneers, with spade and pickaxe armed, 
Forerun the royal camp, to trench a field, 
Or cast a rampart. Mammon led them on-- 
Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell 
From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts 
Were always do...Read more of this...

by Masters, Edgar Lee
...y eye
Flit so liquidly, Tennessee Claflin Shope?
Are you trying to fathom the esotericism of an egg?
Your voice is very metallic this morning, Hortense Robbins --
Almost like a guinea hen's!
Quah! That was a guttural sigh, Isaiah Beethoven;
Did you see the shadow of the hawk,
Or did you step upon the drumsticks
Which the cook threw out this morning?
Be chivalric, heroic, or aspiring,
Metaphysical, religious, or rebellious,
You shall never get out of the barnyard
Except by way...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...
no matter. He is flung
on the gray ash-heap, lies in dung

with his dead wives
with open, bloody eyes,
while those metallic feathers oxidize.


St. Peter's sin
was worse than that of Magdalen
whose sin was of the flesh alone;

of spirit, Peter's,
falling, beneath the flares,
among the "servants and officers."

Old holy sculpture
could set it all together
in one small scene, past and future:

Christ stands amazed,
Peter, two fingers raised
to surprised lips, b...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...lected face, in which we linger, receiving
Dreams and inspirations on an unassigned
Frequency, but the hues have turned metallic,
The curves and edges are not so rich. Each person
Has one big theory to explain the universe
But it doesn't tell the whole story
And in the end it is what is outside him
That matters, to him and especially to us
Who have been given no help whatever
In decoding our own man-size quotient and must rely
On second-hand knowledge. Yet I know
That...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...ithout a Moment's Bell --
Into Conjecture's presence --
Is like a Face of Steel --
That suddenly looks into ours
With a metallic grin --
The Cordiality of Death --
Who drills his Welcome in --...Read more of this...

by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...outh!
Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing
Of their tender human youth!
Let them feel that this cold metallic motion
Is not all the life God fashions or reveals:
Let them prove their living souls against the notion
That they live in you, or under you, O wheels!
Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,
Grinding life down from its mark;
And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,
Spin on blindly in the dark.

Now tell the poor young children...Read more of this...

by Kizer, Carolyn
...y distended with finny young,
Leaf-mould wilderness, hare-bell, toadstool,
Odd, small snakes loving through the leaves,
Metallic beetles rambling over stones: all
Wild and natural -flashed out her instinctive love,
and quick, she
Picked up the fluttering. bleeding bat the cat laid at her feet,
And held the little horror to the mirror, where
He gazed on himself and shrieked like an old screen door
far off.

Depended from her pinched thumb, each wing
Came clattering dow...Read more of this...

by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...w grow calm,
In the days of slender harpsichords with tapping tinkling quills,
Or carolling to her spinet with its thin metallic thrills.

So Mary, the household minstrel, who always loved to please,
Sat down to the new "Clementi," and struck the glittering keys.
Hushed were the children's voices, and every eye grew dim,
As, floating from lip and finger, arose the "Vesper Hymn."

Catharine, child of a neighbor, curly and rosy-red,
(Wedded since, and a widow,-- som...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...that hold up the dome of high ideal heaven 
Which is my prison, 
And all these human pillars of loftiness, going stiff, metallic-stunned with the weight of their responsibility 
I stumble against them. 
Stumbling-blocks, painful ones. 

To keep on holding up this ideal civilisation 
Must be excruciating: unless you stiffen into metal, when it is easier to stand stock rigid than to move. 

This is why I tug at them, individually, with my arm round their waist 
The ...Read more of this...

by Levertov, Denise
...over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day's blow
rang out, metallic--or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can....Read more of this...

by Atwood, Margaret
...t wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go....Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things