Famous Offshore Poems by Famous Poets

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

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El Extraviado

...Over the radiant ridges borne out on the offshore wind, 
I have sailed as a butterfly sails whose priming wings unfurled 
Leave the familiar gardens and visited fields behind 
To follow a cloud in the east rose-flushed on the rim of the world. 


I have strayed from the trodden highway for walking with upturned eyes 
On the way of the wind in the treetops, and the drift of the tinted rack. 
For the...Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan


Rip

...It can't be the passing of time that casts
That white shadow across the waters
Just offshore.
I shiver a little, with the evening.
I turn down the steep path to find
What's left of the river gold.
I whistle a dog lazily, and lazily
A bird whistles me.
Close by a big river, I am alive in my own country,
I am home again.
Yes: I lived here, and here, and my name,
That I carved young, with a girl's, is healed over, now,
And lies sleeping beneat...Read more of this...
by Wright, James

The Destroyers

...g through the gloom,
 At gaze and gone again --
The Brides of Death that wait the groom --
 The Choosers of the Slain!

Offshore where sea and skyline blend
 In rain, the daylight dies;
The sullen, shouldering sweels attend
 Night and our sacrifice.
Adown the stricken capes no flare --
 No mark on spit or bar, --
Birdled and desperate we dare
 The blindfold game of war.

Nearer the up-flung beams that spell
 The council of our foes;
Clearer the barking guns that tell
 Their s...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The End Of March

...drawn as far as possible, 
indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken, 
seabirds in ones or twos. 
The rackety, icy, offshore wind 
numbed our faces on one side; 
disrupted the formation 
of a lone flight of Canada geese; 
and blew back the low, inaudible rollers 
in upright, steely mist. 

The sky was darker than the water 
--it was the color of mutton-fat jade. 
Along the wet sand, in rubber boots, we followed 
a track of big dog-prints (so big 
they were more like lion-...Read more of this...
by Bishop, Elizabeth

The Mercy

...d on the yellowing pages of a book 
I located in a windowless room of the library 
on 42nd Street, sat thirty-one days 
offshore in quarantine before the passengers
disembarked. There a story ends. Other ships 
arrived, "Tancred" out of Glasgow, "The Neptune"
registered as Danish, "Umberto IV," 
the list goes on for pages, November gives 
way to winter, the sea pounds this alien shore. 
Italian miners from Piemonte dig 
under towns in western Pennsylvania 
only to rediscover ...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip


The Negatives

...myself what I won't 
 believe. The hotel quiets 
 early at night, 
 the aged brace themselves for 
 another sleep, and offshore 
 the sea quickens its pace. I 
 am suddenly 
 old, caught in a strange country 
 for which no man would die.

THOMAS DELAIN: 
from a journal found on his person

 At night wakened by the freight 
 trains boring through the suburbs 
 of Lyon, I watched first light 
 corrode the darkness, disturb 
 what little wildlife was left 
 in the alleys: birds...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip

Who Runs America?

...

blackens ocean from broken Gulf tankers 
spills onto Santa Barbara beaches from 

Standard of California derricks offshore. 

...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

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