Famous Normal Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Normal poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous normal poems. These examples illustrate what a famous normal poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...es to pay a tear;
None walks slow, for the love that's through, --
I might mention, my recent dear,
I've reverted to normal, too....Read more of this...
by
Landor, Walter Savage
...glass and
insert
make love to the fresh new whiteness
maybe get lucky
again
first for
me
later
for you.
from "All's Normal Here" - 1985...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...up and says "Room
for one more" and now you
know what kind of hospital you're in
and you must escape from it
by acting "normal" pretending there isn't
a conspiracy against you as Dead of Night
shifts into Shock Corridor
there are a dozen versions of this dream
I keep thinking of what Ashbery said
about escapism he said we need
all the escapism we can get
and even that isn't going to be enough...Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...hose of the beech radiating but modified by droop and by a screw-set towards
jutting points. But beyond this since the normal growth of the boughs is radiating
there is a system of spoke-wise clubs of green — sleeve-pieces. And since the
end shoots curl and carry young scanty leaf-stars these clubs are tapered, and I
have seen also pieces in profile with chiseled outlines, the blocks thus made
detached and lessening towards the end. However the knot-star is the chief thi...Read more of this...
by
Graham, Jorie
....
O jewel! O valuable!
That night the moon
Dragged its blood bag, sick
Animal
Up over the harbor lights.
And then grew normal,
Hard and apart and white.
The scale-sheen on the sand scared me to death.
We kept picking up handfuls, loving it,
Working it like dough, a mulatto body,
The silk grits.
A dog picked up your doggy husband. He went on.
Now I am silent, hate
Up to my neck,
Thick, thick.
I do not speak.
I am packing the hard potatoes like good clothes,
I am packing the ...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...ith all 3 of my girlfriends.
I felt better when everything was in
disorder.
it will take me some months to get back to normal:
I can't even find a roach to commune with.
I have lost my rythm.
I can't sleep.
I can't eat.
I have been robbed of
my filth....Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...e had two children, a boy two-
and-a-half years old and the other, an infant born premature-
ly, but now almost up to normal weight.
The surgeon told me that they'd come over from camping
on Big Lost River where he had caught a fourteen-inch brook
trout. He was young looking, though he did not have much
hair on his head.
I talked to the surgeon for a little while longer and said
good-bye. We were leaving in the afternoon for Lake Josephus
located at the edge of the...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...ooks,
cabdrivers...
and you turn over
to your left side
to get the sun
on your back
and out
of your eyes.
from "All's Normal Here" - 1985...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...back,
I've fallen in love with another sap,
3/4 Italian and 1/2 Jap,
and the whores go
the whores go
etc.
from "All's Normal Here" - 1985...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...it, relive some of the way
It looked, turn our faces to the globe as it sets
And still be coming out all right:
Nerves normal, breath normal. Since it is a metaphor
Made to include us, we are a part of it and
Can live in it as in fact we have done,
Only leaving our minds bare for questioning
We now see will not take place at random
But in an orderly way that means to menace
Nobody--the normal way things are done,
Like the concentric growing up of days
Around a life: correctl...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...t militant trashImportant Persons shoutIs not so crude as our wish:What mad Nijinsky wroteAbout DiaghilevIs true of the normal heart;For the error bred in the boneOf each woman and each manCraves what it cannot have,Not universal loveBut to be loved alone. From the conservative darkInto the ethical lifeThe dense commuters come,Repeating their morning vow;"I will be true to the wife,I'll concentrate more on my work,"And helpless governors wakeTo resume their compulsory game:Wh...Read more of this...
by
Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)
...red, as allowed to gather
itself from its stream; the way it falls that the drain
would have it.
But in this case a normal path interrupted by a pot;
for which soup is the outcome of all I do . . ....Read more of this...
by
Edson, Russell
...ot at its best.
It was impossib1e, and with form. They rode in sunlight,
Were mangled. But I say courage is not the abnormal.
Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches.
The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment.
It is too near the whore's heart: the bounty of impulse,
And the failure to sustain even small kindness.
Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being.
Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality.
Accomplishmen...Read more of this...
by
Gilbert, Jack
...left them thus.
At some transitional stage, then, a luckless few,
No doubt, must have had eyes after the up-to-date,
Normal type had achieved snug
Darkness, safe from the guns of heavn;
Whose blind mouths would abuse words that belonged to their
Great-grandsires, unabashed, talking of light in some
Eunuch'd, etiolated,
Fungoid sense, as a symbol of
Abstract thoughts. If a man, one that had eyes, a poor
Misfit, spoke of the grey dawn or the stars or green-
Sloped sea w...Read more of this...
by
Lewis, C S
...n 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 September she looked at me
and said I...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...father blundering ‘into the Selby Road, high on morphine’
Could but end in the same way.
These griefs were only too normal, as was my mother’s death you wrote of
With such sad eloquence as you shared my vigil: nothing could be added
To your lines.
And of it all and of what I cannot speak?
The silence in Gethsemane
The breaking of bread
The communion when the wine I drank
Made your cradle Catholic soul
Fret at my insouciance.
VI
1
Waking early I felt my sixt...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...and beat;
Ridden all day with a sore on his back,
Left all night with nothing to eat.
That was a matter of everyday
Normal occurrence with Mongrel Grey.
We might have sold him, but someone heard
He was bred out back on a flooded run,
Where he learnt to swim like a waterbird;
Midnight or midday were all as one --
In the flooded ground he would find his way;
Nothing could puzzle old Mongrel Grey.
'Tis a trick, no doubt, that some horses learn;
When the floods are ...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...and liked a drink.The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every dayAnd that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declareHe was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment PlanAnd had everything necessary to the Modern Man,A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.O...Read more of this...
by
Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)
...we are asked to rise
And then if we are true to plan
Our statures touch the skies --
The Heroism we recite
Would be a normal thing
Did not ourselves the Cubits warp
For fear to be a King --...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...alive,
Not there to interfere or connive,
Linger, leave or arrive.
It seemed almost as though
Her death was quite normal and no
Clue to his part would show.
So then, with impunity,
He called up that buttocky beauty
He had so long longed to see
All covering gone: the double
Joggle of warm weighty bubbles
Was sweet delirious trouble.
And all night, all night he enjoyed her;
Such sport in her smooth dimpled water;
Then daylight came like a warder.
And he ro...Read more of this...
by
Scannell, Vernon
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