Famous Nervous Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Nervous poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous nervous poems. These examples illustrate what a famous nervous poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Marge Piercy
A heap of wheat, says the Song of Songs
but I've never seen wheat in a pile.
Apples, potatoes, cabbages, carrots
make lumpy stacks, but you are sleek
as a seal hauled out in the winter sun.
I can see you as a great goose egg
or a single juicy and fully ripe peach.
You swell like a natural...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
"little soul, little flirting,
little perverse one
where are you off to now?
little wan one, firm one
little exposed one...
and never make fun of me again."
Now I must betray myself.
The feast of bondage and unity is near,
And none engaged in that great piety
When each bows to the other, kneels, and takes
Hand in hand, glance and glance, care...Read more of this...
by
Galway Kinnell
At intermission I find her backstage
still practicing the piece coming up next.
She calls it the "solo in high dreary."
Her bow niggles at the string like a hand
stroking skin it never wanted to touch.
Probably under her scorn she is sick
that she can't do better by it. As I am,
at the dreary in me, such as the disparity
between all the tenderness...Read more of this...
by
Norman Dubie
The flock of pigeons rises over the roof,
and just beyond them, the shimmering asphalt fields
gather their dull colored airliners.
It is the very early night,
a young brunette sits before the long
darkening glass of the airport's west wall.
She smells coffee burning
and something else-- her old mother's
bureau filled with mothballs.
Her nearly silver blouse smells of anise
and the heat of an iron.
She suddenly...Read more of this...
by
Vernon Scannell
The naked hunter's fist, bunched round his spear,
Was tight and wet inside with sweat of fear;
He heard behind him what the hunted hear.
The silence in the undergrowth crept near;
Its mischief tickled in his nervous ear
And he became the prey, the quivering deer.
The naked hunter feared the threat he knew:
Being hunted, caught, then...Read more of this...
by
James A Emanuel
In tight pants, tight skirts,
Stretched or squeezed,
Youth hurts,
Crammed in, bursting out,
Flesh will sing
And hide its doubt
In nervous hips, hopping glance,
Usurping rouge,
Provoking stance.
Put off, or put on,
Youth hurts. And then
It's gone....Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
On March 1, 1958, four deserters from the French Army of North Africa,
August Rein, Henri Bruette, Jack Dauville, & Thomas Delain, robbed a
government pay station at Orleansville. Because of the subsequent
confession of Dauville the other three were captured or shot. Dauville
was given his freedom and returned to the land of his birth, the U.S.A.
AUGUST REIN:...Read more of this...
by
Wilfred Owen
I
Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us . . .
Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . .
Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . .
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
But nothing happens.
Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
Like twitching agonies of men...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
O A’ ye pious godly flocks,
Weel fed on pastures orthodox,
Wha now will keep you frae the fox,
Or worrying tykes?
Or wha will tent the waifs an’ crocks,
About the dykes?
The twa best herds in a’ the wast,
The e’er ga’e gospel horn a blast
These five an’ twenty simmers past—
Oh, dool to tell!
Hae had a bitter black out-cast
Atween themsel’.
O,...Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
It could be the name of a prehistoric beast
that roamed the Paleozoic earth, rising up
on its hind legs to show off its large vocabulary,
or some lover in a myth who is metamorphosed into a book.
It means treasury, but it is just a place
where words congregate with their relatives,
a big park where hundreds of family reunions
are always being held,
house, home,...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
"The spirits do not like the light,"
The medium said, and turned the switch;
The little lady on my right
Clutched at my hand with nervous twitch.
(She seemed to be a pretty *****.)
The moustached women on my left,
With spirits on hr heavy breath,
Lasciviously leaned her heft
On me as one who languisheth.
The sordid room was still as death.
"A shape I see," the medium...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
The surly cop looked out at me in sleep
insect-like. Guess, who was the insect.
I'd asked him in my robe
& hospital gown in the elevator politely
why someone saw so many police around,
and without speaking he looked.
A meathead, and of course he was armed, to creep
across my nervous system some time ago wrecked.
I saw the point of Loeb
at last, to give...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just on spec, addressed as follows, "Clancy, of The Overflow".
And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
(And I...Read more of this...
by
George Meredith
What may the woman labour to confess?
There is about her mouth a nervous twitch.
'Tis something to be told, or hidden:--which?
I get a glimpse of hell in this mild guess.
She has desires of touch, as if to feel
That all the household things are things she knew.
She stops before the glass. What sight in view?
A face that seems the latest to...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
I dreamed that dead, and meditating,
I lay upon a grave, or bed,
(at least, some cold and close-built bower).
In the cold heart, its final thought
stood frozen, drawn immense and clear,
stiff and idle as I was there;
and we remained unchanged together
for a year, a minute, an hour.
Suddenly there was a motion,
as startling, there, to every sense
as an explosion. Then it dropped...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
a
1. Los smitten with astonishment
Frightend at the hurtling bones
2. And at the surging sulphureous
Perturbed Immortal mad raging
3. In whirlwinds & pitch & nitre
Round the furious limbs of Los
4. And Los formed nets & gins
And threw the nets round about
5. He watch'd in shuddring fear
The dark changes & bound every change
With rivets of iron & brass;
6. And...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
prudence my love
each time you invite me to tea
i wonder do i have the appetite
for what i
hope you are requiring of me
prudence my love
are you really trying to say
over the sickly cream cakes
i can’t eat
that you desire me to stay
prudence my love
what can i read in the signs
your eyes and hands throw out
as we talk
i’m lost in your guide-lines
prudence...Read more of this...
by
Hilaire Belloc
Remote and ineffectual Don
That dared attack my Chesterton,
With that poor weapon, half-impelled,
Unlearnt, unsteady, hardly held,
Unworthy for a tilt with men--
Your quavering and corroded pen;
Don poor at Bed and worse at Table,
Don pinched, Don starved, Don miserable;
Don stuttering, Don with roving eyes,
Don nervous, Don of crudities;
Don clerical, Don ordinary,
Don self-absorbed and solitary;
Don here-and-there, Don epileptic;
Don puffed and empty, Don dyspeptic;
Don...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
Both of you are great light borrowers.
Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected,
And your first gift is making stone out of everything.
I wake to a mausoleum; you are here,
Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes,
Spiteful as a woman, but...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
On the fair green hills of Rio
There grows a fearful stain:
The poor who come to Rio
And can't go home again.
On the hills a million people,
A million sparrows, nest,
Like a confused migration
That's had to light and rest,
Building its nests, or houses,
Out of nothing at all, or air.
You'd think a breath would end them,
They perch...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Collating bones: I would have liked to do.
Henry would have been hot at that.
I missed his profession.
As a little boy I always thought
'I'm an archeologist'; who
could be more respected peaceful serious than that?
Hell talkt my brain awake.
Bluffed to the ends of me pain
& I took up a pencil;
like this I'm longing with. One sign
would snow me back, back.
is there...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("La salle est magnifique.")
{IV. Aug. 23, 1839.}
The hall is gay with limpid lustre bright—
The feast to pampered palate gives delight—
The sated guests pick at the spicy food,
And drink profusely, for the cheer is good;
And at that table—where the wise are few—
Both sexes and all...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
We read in the press that Lord Northcote is here
To take up Lord Tennyson's mission.
'Tis pleasant to find they have sent us a Peer,
And a man of exalted position.
It's his business to see that the Radical horde
From loyalty's path does not swerve us;
But his tastes, and the task, don't seem quite in accord...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
"the cure of souls." Henry James
The radiant soda of the seashore fashions
Fun, foam and freedom. The sea laves
The Shaven sand. And the light sways forward
On self-destroying waves.
The rigor of the weekday is cast aside with shoes,
With business suits and traffic's motion;
The lolling man lies with the passionate sun,
Or is drunken in the ocean.
A socialist health take should...Read more of this...
by
Frank Bidart
The only thing I miss about Los Angeles
is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing
--pimps, surplus stores, footprints of the stars
--descending through the city
fast as the law would allow
through the lights, then rising to the stack
out of the city
to...Read more of this...
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