Famous Oxygen Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Oxygen poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous oxygen poems. These examples illustrate what a famous oxygen poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Adrienne Rich
First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.
There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
"Do you like me?"
I asked the blue blazer.
No answer.
Silence bounced out of his books.
Silence fell off his tongue
and sat between us
and clogged my throat.
It slaughtered my trust.
It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.
We exchanged blind words,
and I did not cry,
and I did not beg,
blackness lunged in my heart,
and something that had been good,
a sort of kindly oxygen,
turned into a...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Of Bronze -- and Blaze --
The North -- Tonight --
So adequate -- it forms --
So preconcerted with itself --
So distant -- to alarms --
And Unconcern so sovereign
To Universe, or me --
Infects my simple spirit
With Taints of Majesty --
Till I take vaster attitudes --
And strut upon my stem --
Disdaining Men, and Oxygen,
For Arrogance of them --
My Splendors, are Menagerie --
But...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
I had a father once, the records say.
He has gone away down the long avenue
Of death, on the hand-held minor no mist
Of his breath, his firm signature no more.
No more holding down his hat in the wind,
Running to catch the last post, he has gone
Beyond the wind-shaped stones on the high wall.
His breath in that final coma came steady.
Stertorous,...Read more of this...
by
Margaret Atwood
More and more frequently the edges
of me dissolve and I become
a wish to assimilate the world, including
you, if possible through the skin
like a cool plant's tricks with oxygen
and live by a harmless green burning.
I would not consume
you or ever
finish, you would still be there
surrounding me, complete
as the air.
Unfortunately I don't have leaves.
Instead I have eyes
and teeth and other non-green
things...Read more of this...
by
W S Merwin
Matches among other things that were not allowed
never would be
lying high in a cool blue box
that opened in other hands and there they all were
bodies clean and smooth blue heads white crowns
white sandpaper on the sides of the box scoring
fire after fire gone before
I could hear the scratch and flare
when they were over
and catch the smell of the striking
I...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
HAVE me in the blue and the sun.
Have me on the open sea and the mountains.
When I go into the grass of the sea floor, I will go alone.
This is where I came from—the chlorine and the salt are blood and bones.
It is here the nostrils rush the air to the lungs. It is here oxygen clamors to be...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He...Read more of this...
by
Taja Kramberger
For Taslima Nasrin, in sisterhood
There is no fatwa in this land,
what are you thinking,
this is Europe.
A place without borders and
without internal wrinkles,
without possibilities for asylum and exile.
There is no fatwa in this land –
it is divided into
thousands of small conspiracies,
tiny murders per partes,
which seem like coincidental misfortunes
and sap your blood, drop by drop.
There is no fatwa in this land,
what are...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The farthest Thunder that I heard
Was nearer than the Sky
And rumbles still, though torrid Noons
Have lain their missiles by --
The Lightning that preceded it
Struck no one but myself --
But I would not exchange the Bolt
For all the rest of Life --
Indebtedness to Oxygen
The Happy may repay,
But not the obligation
To Electricity --
It founds the Homes and decks the Days
And every...Read more of this...
by
Wallace Stevens
There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.
He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.
It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,
How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,
For the outlook that would...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
If your Nerve, deny you --
Go above your Nerve --
He can lean against the Grave,
If he fear to swerve --
That's a steady posture --
Never any bend
Held of those Brass arms --
Best Giant made --
If your Soul seesaw --
Lift the Flesh door --
The Poltroon wants Oxygen --
Nothing more --...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist,
What will result from compounding
Fluids or solids.
And who can tell
How men and women will interact
On each other, or what children will result?
There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife,
Good in themselves, but evil toward each other:
He oxygen, she hydrogen,
Their son, a devastating fire.
I Trainor, the druggist, a mixer of chemicals,
Killed while...Read more of this...
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