Famous Motif Poems by Famous Poets

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

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...- 
All night above me
 Thuds a smithy of feet.
All night,
 stirring the ceiling’s calm,
dancers stampede
 to a moaning motif:
“Marquita,
 Marquita,
Marquita my darling,
why won’t you,
 Marquita,
why won’t you love me …”
But why
 Should marquita love me?!
I have
 no francs to spare.
And Marquita
 (at the slightest wink!)
for a hundred francs
 she’d be brought to your room.
The sum’s not large - 
 just live for show - 
No,
 you highbrow,
 ruffling your matted hair,
you would t...Read more of this...
by Mayakovsky, Vladimir


ducks and wisdom

...[from a motif by Jean Dunand (1877-1942)]

seven lacqueur ducks on a silver pond
their rippling held in a moveless frieze
nothing now can help them swim beyond
the stoned edges (invent a new-age breeze)
eternity is water starved of trees
their fixture is our own - for all we fidget
history puts us down as one dead digit

silver-ponded we can't stop being stirred
to ...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye To His Poetry Students

...ufacturer
of brassieres on the Coast, whose eclogues
give the fullest treatment in literature yet
to the sagging-breast motif; goodbye, you in San Quentin,
who wrote, "Being German my hero is Hitler,"
instead of "Sincerely yours," at the end of long,
neat-scripted letter demolishing
the pre-Raphaelites:

I swear to you, it was just my way
of cheering myself up, as I licked
the stamped, self-addressed envelopes,
the game I had
of trying to guess which one of you, this time,
ha...Read more of this...
by Kinnell, Galway

The Double Image

...ortrait done,
holding my smile in place, till it grew formal.
Once I mailed you a picture of a rabbit
and a postcard of Motif number one,
as if it were normal
to be a mother and be gone.

They hung my portrait in the chill
north light, matching
me to keep me well.
Only my mother grew ill.
She turned from me, as if death were catching,
as if death transferred,
as if my dying had eaten inside of her.
That August you were two, by I timed my days with doubt.
On the first of Septe...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

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