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Famous Nudge Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)
...ss in their voices— 
sleep, sleep . . . 
Gentlefooted crowds are treading out your lullaby. 
Their arms nudge, they brush shoulders, 
hitch this way then that, mass and surge at the crossings— 
lullaby, lullaby! The wild-fowl police whistles, 
the enraged roar of the traffic, machine shrieks: 
it is all to put you to sleep, 
to soften your limbs in relaxed postures, 
and that your head slip sidewise, and your hair loosen 
and fall over your eyes and over your ...Read more of this...



by Hughes, Ted
...Russia and America circle each other;
Threats nudge an act that were without doubt 
A melting of the mould in the mother,
Stones melting about the root.

The quick of the earth burned out:
The toil of all our ages a loss
With leaf and insect. Yet flitting thought
(Not to be thought ridiculous)

Shies from the world-cancelling black
Of its playing shadow: it has learned 
That there's no trusting ...Read more of this...

by Roethke, Theodore
...ey shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.

If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover....Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...rip on his hat rim, sheets of ice wrapping the hunks of coal, the caravanserai a gray blur in slant of rain.
Let us nudge the steam radiator with our wool slippers and write poems of Launcelot, the hero, and Roland, the hero, and all the olden golden men who rode horses in the rain....Read more of this...

by Hughes, Ted
...deep in both worlds, can be still
As a painting, trembling hardly at all

Though the dragonfly alight,
Whatever horror nudge her root....Read more of this...



by Levertov, Denise
...g after you have swung back
away from me
I think you are still with me:

you come in close to the shore
on the tide
and nudge me awake the way

a boat adrift nudges the pier:
am I a pier
half-in half-out of the water?

and in the pleasure of that communion
I lose track,
the moon I watch goes down, the

tide swings you away before
I know I'm
alone again long since,

mud sucking at gray and black
timbers of me,
a light growth of green dreams drying....Read more of this...

by Edgar, Marriott
...ey marched 'im away one wint'ry day,
'Is musket course to shoot.

They woke 'im up at the crack o' dawn,
Wi' many a nudge and shake,
'E were dreaming that t' Sergeant 'ad broke 'is neck,
And 'e didn't want to wake.

Lieutenant Bird came on parade,
And chided the lads for mooning,
'E talked in a voice like a pound o' plums,
'Is tonsils needed pruning.

"Move to the right by fours," he said,
Crisp like but most severe,
But Sam didn't know 'is right from 'is left,
So...Read more of this...

by Tessimond, A S J
...Acknowledge the drum's whisper.
Yield to its velvet
Nudge. Cut a slow air-
Curve. Then dip (hip to hip):
Sway, swing, pedantically
Poise. Now recover,
Converting the coda
To prelude of sway-swing-
Recover.
 Acknowledge
The drum-crack's alacrity - 
Acrid exactitude -
Catch it, then slacken,
Then catch as cat catches
Rat. Trace your graph:
Loop, ellipse. Skirt an air-wall
To bend it and ...Read more of this...

by Webb, Charles
...s

pointing north, silent letters
show the power of hidden things.
Voiced by our ancestors,
but heard no more, they nudge
our thoughts toward death,
infinity, our senses' inability
to see the earth as round,

circling the sun in a universe
implacable as "Might Makes Right,"
ineffable as tomorrow's second r,
incomprehensible as imbroglio's g,
the e that finishes inscrutable,
imponderable, immense,
the terrifying k in "I don't know."...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...to budge him,
Reposing like a baby, with his head upon the rail;
But Shamus seemed unhappy, and from time to time would nudge him,
Though his prods to protestation were without the least avail.
Then to that goatish mind, maybe, a sense of fell disaster
Came stealing like a spectre in the dim and dreary dawn;
For his bleat of warning blended with the snoring of his master
In a chorus of calamity - but Casey slumbered on.

Yet oh, that goat was troubled, for his efforts...Read more of this...

by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...wood was still -- 

Cracked, crannied pines bent like malicious cripples 
Before the gusty wind; they seemed to nose, 
Nudge, poke each other, cackling with ill mirth -- 
Enchantment's days were over -- sh! -- Suppose 
That crouching log there, where the white light stipples 
Should -- break its quiet! WAS THAT CRIMSON -- EARTH? 

It smirched the ground like a lewd whisper, "Danger!" -- 
I hunched my cloak about me -- then, appalled, 
Turned ice and fire by turns -- for -- s...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...t's time to go to bed."

So they all are glad, and they nestle in,
And squat on the rough old nursery rug,
And they nudge and hush as I begin,
And the fire leaps up and all's so snug;
And there I sit in the big arm-chair,
And how they are eager and sweet and wise,
And they cup their chins in their hands and stare
At the heart of the flame with thoughtful eyes.

And then, as I read by the ruddy glow
And the little ones sit entranced and still . . .
He's dra...Read more of this...

by Crane, Stephen
...Three little birds in a row
Sat musing.
A man passed near that place.
Then did the little birds nudge each other.

They said, "He thinks he can sing."
They threw back their heads to laugh.
With quaint countenances
They regarded him.
They were very curious,
Those three little birds in a row....Read more of this...

by Jong, Erica
...
in her usual shroud of ice.

I turn to you
knowing that
unrequited love
is good
for poetry,
knowing that pain
will nudge the muse
as well as anything,
knowing that you
are afraid, fettered
to a life
you do not love,
& so unfree
that freedom seems
more fearful even
than the familiar
business
of being
a grumbling slave.

I lived
that way
once,
& I know
that freedom
is its own reward,
that it propagates
itself
by means
of runners,

that nobody
gives it to you,
not even ...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan
...breathe,
Now that my symbols have outelbowed space,
Time at the city spectacles, and half
The dear, daft time I take to nudge the sentence,
In trust and tale I have divided sense,
Slapped down the guillotine, the blood-red double
Of head and tail made witnesses to this
Murder of Eden and green genesis.

The insect certain is the plague of fables.

This story's monster has a serpent caul,
Blind in the coil scrams round the blazing outline,
Measures his own length on th...Read more of this...

by Hughes, Ted
...> 

The starting lever
Cracks its action, like a snapping knuckle.
The battery is alive - but like a lamb
Trying to nudge its solid-frozen mother -
While the seat claims my buttock-bones, bites
With the space-cold of earth, which it has joined
In one solid lump. 

I squirt commercial sure-fire
Down the black throat - it just coughs.
It ridicules me - a trap of iron stupidity
I've stepped into. I drive the battery
As if I were hammering and hammering
The frozen...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...alaams. 

I lie abstracted, and hear beautiful tales of things, and the reasons of things;
They are so beautiful, I nudge myself to listen. 

I cannot say to any person what I hear—I cannot say it to myself—it is very
 wonderful. 

It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so exactly in its orbit
 forever
 and ever, without one jolt, or the untruth of a single second; 
I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten b...Read more of this...

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