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Famous Perforated Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Tzara, Tristan
...a lamp is called green and sees
carefully stepping into a season of fever
the wind has swept the rivers' magic
and i've perforated the nerve
by the clear frozen lake
has snapped the sabre
but the dance round terrace tables
shuts in the shock of the marble shudder
new sober...Read more of this...



by Lorde, Audre
...n like a diamond 
on glass windows 
singing out within the crash of sun 
Then there are words like stapled wagers 
in a perforated book—buy and sign and tear apart—
and come whatever will all chances 
the stub remains 
an ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge. 
Some words live in my throat 
breeding like adders. Other know sun 
seeking like gypsies over my tongue 
to explode through my lips 
like young sparrows bursting from shell. 
Some words 
bedevil me 

Love is ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...or two more—for see, the frame all wasted already, and sinking, 
And the yellow-blue countenance see. 

I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet wound,
Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive, 
While the attendant stands behind aside me, holding the tray and pail. 

I am faithful, I do not give out; 
The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen, 
These and more I dress with impassive hand—(yet deep in ...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...rned
and took the second shot just above
the sternum, the third tore away
the right shoulder of his uniform,
the fourth perforated his cheek. As he
slid out of his comrade's hold
toward the gray cement of the Ramblas
he lost count and knew only
that he would not die and that the blue sky
smudged with clouds was not heaven
for heaven was nowhere and in his eyes
slowly filling with their own light.
The pigeons that spotted the cold floor
of Barcelona rose as he sank bel...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...way back to the ward unveiled

Over painful months, the self-neglect, the inappropriate remarks

In pubs, the neglected perforated eardrum, keeping

Company with his feckless cousins between their bouts in prison.

The pointless team meetings he was patted through,

My abrupt dismissal as carer at the keyworker’s instigation,

The admission we knew nothing of, the abscondings we were told of

And had to sort out, then the phone call from the ASW.

"We are about to sec...Read more of this...



by Troupe, Quincy
...in the middle
of crowds that need explaining, the calligraphy of this penumbra
slanting ace-deuce, cocked, carrying the perforated legacy of bebop
these bold, peccadillo, pirouetting pellagras
razor-sharp clean, they cut into our rip-tiding dreams carrying
their whirlpooling imaginations, their rivers of schemes
assaulted by pellets of raindrops
these broken mirrors catching fragments
of sonorous words, entrapping us between parentheses
two bat wings curved, imprisoning the w...Read more of this...

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