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Famous Not Even Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Not Even poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous not even poems. These examples illustrate what a famous not even poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Plath, Sylvia
...ur great-grandchildren.
Do not be afraid, it is not so.

I will only take it and go aside quietly.
You will not even hear me opening it, no paper crackle,

No falling ribbons, no scream at the end.
I do not think you credit me with this discretion.

If you only knew how the veils were killing my days.
To you they are only transparencies, clear air.

But my god, the clouds are like cotton.
Armies of them. They are carbon monoxide.

Sweet...Read more of this...



by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ilence, on those eyes 
That image sleep in death, upon that form
Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear
Be shed--not even in thought. Nor, when those hues
Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,
Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone
In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
Let not high verse, mourning the memory
Of that which is no more, or painting's woe
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence, 
And all the show...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...have invaded and so mastered me 
With a slow tolerance that eventually 
Assumed a blind ascendency of custom 
That saw not even itself. When I came in, 
Often I’d find him strewn along my couch
Like an amorphous lizard with its clothes on, 
Reading a book and waiting for its dinner. 
His clothes were always odiously in order, 
Yet I should not have thought of him as clean— 
Not even if he had washed himself to death
Proving it. There was nothing right about him.<...Read more of this...

by O'Hara, Frank
...ree on fire!--
for every day is another view
of the tentative past
grown secure in its foundry of shimmering
that's not even historical;it's just me.

3

And the other half
of me where I master the root
of my every idiosyncrasy
and fit my ribs like a glove 


4

is that me who accepts betrayal
in the abstract as if it were insight?
and draws its knuckles
across the much-lined eyes
in the most knowing manner of our time?


5

The wind that smiles t...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...as one who never was away.
No tongue shall ask, whence come ye? but ye shall
Be gods of your own rest imperial.
Not even I, for one whole month, will pry
Into the hours that have pass'd us by,
Since in my arbour I did sing to thee.
O Hermes! on this very night will be
A hymning up to Cynthia, queen of light;
For the soothsayers old saw yesternight
Good visions in the air,--whence will befal,
As say these sages, health perpetual
To shepherds and their flocks; and f...Read more of this...



by Ginsberg, Allen
...hap- 
 pened and walked away unknown and forgotten 
 into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley 
 ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, 
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of 
 the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas- 
 saic, leaped on *******, cried all over the street, 
 danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed 
 phonograph records of nostalgic European 
 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and 
 threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, ...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...has, but there there enters in
Something else to protect her from herself.
There quality makes up for quantity.
Not even New Hampshire farms are much for sale.
The farm I made my home on in the mountains 
1 had to take by force rather than buy.

I caught the owner outdoors by himself
Raking.up after winter, and I said,
“I’m going to put you off this farm: I want it."
“Where are you going to put me? In the road?”
“I’m going to put you on the farm next t...Read more of this...

by Berman, David
...ms are set.

I'm just letting the day be what it is:
a place for a large number of things
to gather and interact --
not even a place but an occasion
a reality for real things.

Friends warned me not to get too psychedelic
or religious with this piece:
"They won't accept it if it's too psychedelic
or religious," but these are valid topics
and I'm the one with the dog twitching on the floor
possibly dreaming of me
that part of me that would beat a dog
for no good reason...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...afe with me on the grass—loose the stop from your throat; 
Not words, not music or rhyme I want—not custom or lecture, not even the
 best; 
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice. 

I mind how once we lay, such a transparent summer morning; 
How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turn’d over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my
 bare-stript heart, 
And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’...Read more of this...

by Nwakanma, Obi
...ugh this windless night 
through the narrow imponderable road 
through the silence - the silence of trees -

I hear not even the gust of wind
I hear only the quiet earth, thawing underneath; 
I hear the slow silent death of winter -

where the sun is yellowest. 
But above, Monadnock looms 
like some angry Moloch, her 
white nipple seizing the space

drained of all milk... 

A she-devil beckoning to worshippers 
seductive - her arm stretching ou...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...th would be deeply deplored.

The Beaver, who happened to hear the remark,
 Protested, with tears in its eyes,
That not even the rapture of hunting the Snark
 Could atone for that dismal surprise!

It strongly advised that the Butcher should be
 Conveyed in a separate ship:
But the Bellman declared that would never agree
 With the plans he had made for the trip:

Navigation was always a difficult art,
 Though with only one ship and one bell:
And he feared he must really d...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...an I not frame a fevered dream,
     But still the Douglas is the theme?
     I'll dream no more,—by manly mind
     Not even in sleep is will resigned.
     My midnight orisons said o'er,
     I'll turn to rest, and dream no more.'
     His midnight orisons he told,
     A prayer with every bead of gold,
     Consigned to heaven his cares and woes,
     And sunk in undisturbed repose,
     Until the heath-cock shrilly crew,
     And morning dawned on Benvenue.

...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...
Let be thy Mark, seeing he is not thine.' 

And drawing somewhat backward she replied, 
`Can he be wronged who is not even his own, 
But save for dread of thee had beaten me, 
Scratched, bitten, blinded, marred me somehow--Mark? 
What rights are his that dare not strike for them? 
Not lift a hand--not, though he found me thus! 
But harken! have ye met him? hence he went 
Today for three days' hunting--as he said-- 
And so returns belike within an hour. 
Mark's way, ...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ion of his dreams,— 
A flame where nothing seems 
To burn but flame itself, by nothing fed; 
And while it all went out,
Not even the faint anodyne of doubt 
May then have eased a painful going down 
From pictured heights of power and lost renown, 
Revealed at length to his outlived endeavor 
Remote and unapproachable forever;
And at his heart there may have gnawed 
Sick memories of a dead faith foiled and flawed 
And long dishonored by the living death 
Assigned alike by chan...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...erus would seem — 
'Three gentlemen at once' (as sagely says 
Good Mrs. Malaprop); then you might deem 
That he was not even one; now many rays 
Were flashing round him; and now a thick steam 
Hid him from sight — like fogs on London days: 
Now Burke, now Tooke he grew to people's fancies, 
And certes often like Sir Philip Francis. 

LXXX 

I've an hypothesis — 'tis quite my own; 
I never let it out till now, for fear 
Of doing people harm about the throne, 
And injur...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...gst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit 
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
 If
there were water
 And no rock
 If there were rock
 And also water
 And water 
 A spring
 A pool among the rock
 If there were the sound of water only
 Not the cicada
 And d...Read more of this...

by Pushkin, Alexander
...shoots, within two flashing seconds,
Into still water like a star.

The glum old man slept not an instant;
All day, not even once he prayed:
Before his eyes still hung and glistened
The wondrous, the relentless shade...
The grove puts on its gown of nightfall;
The moon walks on the cloudy floor;
And there's the maiden - pale, delightful,
Reclining on the spellbound shore.

She looks at him, her hair she brushes,
Blows airy kisses, gestures wild,
Plays with...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...d mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago. It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.

And so I stand, a little sightless. So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The ...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...ock of my poems
And my eyes' blue violent flame.

No one was dearer to me, no one,
No one left me this bereft,
Not even he who betrayed me to torment,
Not even he who caressed, then left.



x x x

No, my prince, I am not the one
On whom you'd rather lay your eyes,
And for long these lips of mine
Do not kiss, but prophesize.

Do not think I'm in delirium
Or with boredom I do whine
Loudly I speak of pain:
It's the very trade of mine.

An...Read more of this...

by Padel, Ruth
...mands the serfs to sing
While picking, so they can't hurl
The odd gog into their mouths. No one could spy
Her here, not even the sun in its burn-time. Her cheeks 
Are simmering fire.
We're talking iridescence, a Red Admiral's last tremble
Before the avid schoolboy plunks his net.
Or imagine
* 
A leveret - like the hare you shot, remember? 
Which ran round screaming like a baby?
Only mine is shivering in papery winter corn,
While the hunter (as it might be, you...Read more of this...

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