Famous Misshapen Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Bat

...gs of your house sniff me. 
They know I'm something to be caught 
somewhere in the cemetery hanging upside down 
like a misshapen udder....Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne


Beowulf (Modern English)

...s,
strange spirits. The second of them, as clearly
as any man could understand, was the image of a woman,
the other, misshapen from the form of a man,
trod the exile’s path, except that he was bigger
than any other man. They named that one Grendel
in days of yore, the land-dwellers. They know no father,
whether any secret spirit conceived them earlier.
They keep watch over an obscure land, wolf-cliffs,
windy headlands, twisted paths through the swamp,
where the moun...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Blessing The Cornfields

...
And whene'er a youth or maiden
Found a crooked ear in husking,
Found a maize-ear in the husking
Blighted, mildewed, or misshapen,
Then they laughed and sang together,
Crept and limped about the cornfields,
Mimicked in their gait and gestures
Some old man, bent almost double,
Singing singly or together:
"Wagemin, the thief of cornfields!
Paimosaid, who steals the maize-ear!"
Till the cornfields rang with laughter,
Till from Hiawatha's wigwam
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens,
Scr...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Conversation with Jeanne

...words, so much paper, who can stand it.
I told you the truth about my distancing myself.
I've stopped worrying about my misshapen life.
It was no better and no worse than the usual human tragedies.

For over thirty years we have been waging our dispute
As we do now, on the island under the skies of the tropics.
We flee a downpour, in an instant the bright sun again,
And I grow dumb, dazzled by the emerald essence of the leaves.

We submerge in foam at the line of the surf,
We...Read more of this...
by Milosz, Czeslaw

Paradox

...I KNEW them both upon Miranda's isle, 
Which is of youth a sea-bound seigniory: 
Misshapen Caliban, so seeming vile, 
And Ariel, proud prince of minstrelsy, 
Who did forsake the sunset for my tower 
And like a star above my slumber burned. 
The night was held in silver chains by power 
Of melody, in which all longings yearned-- 
Star-grasping youth in one wild strain expressed, 
Tender as dawn, insistent as the tide; 
The heart of night ...Read more of this...
by Cather, Willa


the adventures (from frederick and the enchantress – dance drama)

...iated trunks - angular branches
  hook claw throttle frederick in their creaking
  joints
   jagged weird
  knotted and misshapen
  petrified maniacal
  figures frantically contorted
  grotesque eccentric in the moon-toothed
  half-light
  tug clutch struggle
  with the haggard form
  zigzag he staggers
  awe-plagued giddy
  near-garrotted mind-deranged
  forcing his sagging limbs through the mangled danger

  till almost beyond redemption beyond self-care
  he once again sur...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

The Ballad of the White Horse

...A Christless chivalry:
Who knew not of the arch or pen,
Great, beautiful half-witted men
From the sunrise and the sea.

Misshapen ships stood on the deep
Full of strange gold and fire,
And hairy men, as huge as sin
With horned heads, came wading in
Through the long, low sea-mire.

Our towns were shaken of tall kings
With scarlet beards like blood:
The world turned empty where they trod,
They took the kindly cross of God
And cut it up for wood.

Their souls were drifting as th...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The City

...Nay, in the Fount of Days they rise, they take their flight,
And wend to the great deep, the Holy Sepulchre.
Those dark misshapen folk to be made lovely there
Hurry with me, not all ignoble as we seem,
Lured by some inexpressible and gorgeous dream.
The earth melts in my blood. The air that I inhale
Is like enchanted wine poured from the Holy Grail.
What was that glimmer then? Was it the flash of wings
As through the blinded mart rode on the King of Kings?
O stay, departing g...Read more of this...
by Cavafy, Constantine P

The Driver

...nion fearful and black,
In a horrible mass entwined,
The rock-fish, the ray with the thorny back,
And the hammer-fish's misshapen kind,
And the shark, the hyena dread of the sea,
With his angry teeth, grinned fiercely on me."

"There hung I, by fulness of terror possessed,
Where all human aid was unknown,
Amongst phantoms, the only sensitive breast,
In that fearful solitude all alone,
Where the voice of mankind could not reach to mine ear,
'Mid the monsters foul of that wilde...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von

The Drops Of Nectar

...ther
Straightway, eagerly to drink them,
And the butterfly came quickly
That he, too, might find a drop there;
Even the misshapen spider
Thither crawl'd and suck'd with vigour.

To a happy end they tasted,
They, and other gentle insects!
For with mortals now divide they
Art?that noblest gift of all.

 1789.*...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang

The Last Quarter of the Moon

...es.
A torn moon flees
Through the hemlock trees,
The hours have gnawed it to feed their spawn.
Pursuing and jeering the misshapen thing
A rabble of clouds flares out of the east.
Like dogs unleashed
After a beast,
They stream on the sky, an outflung string.
A desolate wind, through the unpeopled dark,
Shakes the bushes and whistles through empty nests,
And the fierce unrests
I keep as guests
Crowd my brain with corpses, pallid and stark.
Leave me in peace, O Spectres, who hau...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Trouble with Snowmen

...stands
Though my father is gone
Out there in the garden
Like an unmarked gravestone.

Staring up at the house
Gross and misshapen
As if waiting for something
Bad to happen.

For as the years pass
And I grow older
When summers seem short
And winters colder.

The snowmen I envy
As I watch children play
Are the ones that are made
And then fade away....Read more of this...
by McGough, Roger

Ugly Couple

...ple alive.
Yes indeed they’re so ugly that people run screaming
whenever they see them arrive.
You might say they’re misshapen, repulsive and vile,
or cadaverous, gruesome and gross.
Maybe hideous, grisly, repellent and shocking,
disgusting, unpleasant, morose.
You can call them unsightly, or horrid or scary,
or monstrous or frightful or bad.
You can call them whatever you like, but to me
they will always be called “Mom and Dad.”

 --Kenn Nesbitt

Copyright © Ke...Read more of this...
by Nesbitt, Kenn

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