Famous Offensive Poems by Famous Poets

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

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a reader's de profundis

by Rg Gregory
 in my reading of the moment i have learned
the figure next to christ in da vinci’s last supper
(a painting i have actually seen in a milan church
fragilely restored) is a woman – an honour earned
by mary magdalene who (according to research)
turns out to be christ’s wife – hang on what a whopper

cry those who can’t contemplate centuries of teaching
down...Read more of this...

from imperfect Eden

by Rg Gregory
 (1)
and off to scott's (the dockers' restaurant)
burly men packed in round solid tables
but what the helle (drowned in hellespont)
this place for me was rich in its own fables
i'll be the lover sunk if that enables
an awesome sense of just how deep the spells
that put scotts for me beyond the dardanelles

lace-curtained windows (or memory plays me false)
no capped odysseus could...Read more of this...

The Spleen

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 What art thou, SPLEEN, which ev'ry thing dost ape?
Thou Proteus to abus'd Mankind,
Who never yet thy real Cause cou'd find,
Or fix thee to remain in one continued Shape.
Still varying thy perplexing Form,
Now a Dead Sea thou'lt represent,
A Calm of stupid Discontent,
Then, dashing on the Rocks wilt rage into a Storm. 
Trembling sometimes thou dost appear,
Dissolv'd into a Panick Fear;
On...Read more of this...

On Living

by Nazim Hikmet
 I

Living is no laughing matter:
 you must live with great seriousness
 like a squirrel, for example--
 I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
 I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
 you must take it seriously,
 so much so and to such a degree
 that, for example, your hands tied behind your...Read more of this...

The Angel Food Dogs

by Anne Sexton
 Leaping, leaping, leaping,
down line by line,
growling at the cadavers,
filling the holy jugs with their piss,
falling into windows and mauling the parents,
but soft, kiss-soft,
and sobbing sobbing
into their awful dog dish.

No point? No twist for you
in my white tunnel?
Let me speak plainly,
let me whisper it from the podium--

Mother, may I use your pseudonym?
May I take the dove named Mary
and shove out...Read more of this...

Size and Tears

by Lewis Carroll
 When on the sandy shore I sit,
Beside the salt sea-wave,
And fall into a weeping fit
Because I dare not shave -
A little whisper at my ear
Enquires the reason of my fear.

I answer "If that ruffian Jones
Should recognise me here,
He'd bellow out my name in tones
Offensive to the ear:
He chaffs me so on being stout
(A thing that always puts me out)."

Ah...Read more of this...

A Theory Of Prosody

by Philip Levine
 When Nellie, my old pussy
cat, was still in her prime,
she would sit behind me
as I wrote, and when the line
got too long she'd reach
one sudden black foreleg down
and paw at the moving hand,
the offensive one. The first
time she drew blood I learned
it was poetic to end
a line anywhere to keep her
quiet. After all, many morn-
ings she'd gotten to the...Read more of this...

Dresser The

by Walt Whitman
 1
AN old man bending, I come, among new faces, 
Years looking backward, resuming, in answer to children, 
Come tell us, old man, as from young men and maidens that love me; 
Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances, 
Of unsurpass’d heroes, (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave;)
Now be witness again—paint the...Read more of this...

Spring Offensive

by Wilfred Owen
 Halted against the shade of a last hill,
They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
And, finding comfortable chests and knees
Carelessly slept. But many there stood still
To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.

Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and...Read more of this...

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