Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Posing Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Tebb, Barry
...triangle of empty shops and seedy bedsits,

Some relic of a nineteenth century’s eccentric’s dream come true.

But posing now the question "What to do with a listed building

And the Channel Tunnel coming through?" Its welded slats,

Timber frame and listing broken windows blew our minds-

Like discovering a Tintoretto in a gallery of fakes.

Leeds takes away the steely glare of Sutton

Weighing down on me like breeze-blocks by the ton,

When all I want to do is run ...Read more of this...



by Henley, William Ernest
...int, in washing glass,
Handling the engine, turning taps for tots,
And countering change, and scorning what men say,
Of posing as a dove among the pots,
Nor often gives her dignity away.
Her head's a work of art, and, if her eyes
Be tired and ignorant, she has a waist;
Cheaply the Mode she shadows; and she tries
From penny novels to amend her taste;
And, having mopped the zinc for certain years,
And faced the gas, she fades and disappears....Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...rom the "Plutocratic Push", 
Though he knew they wouldn't lend him any more. 
With his Coolangatta Croesus, who was posing for the day 
As a Friend of Labour, just brought up from town: 
When the Democratic Keystone told the workers, "Vote for Hay", 
Then another blessed horse fell down! 

When the polling day was over, and the promising was done -- 
The promises that never would be kept -- 
Then O'Sullivan came homeward at the sinking of the sun, 
To the Ministerial Benc...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...br>
You stand out in the rain once and get wet
expecting to enter fiction. You huddle
under the Williamsburg Bridge posing for Life.
You trek to the Owl Hotel to lie awake
in a room the size of a cat box and smell
the dawn as it leaks under the shade
with the damp welcome you deserve. Just the once
you earn your doctorate in mismanagement.

So I was eighteen, once, fifty years ago,
a kid from a small town with big ideas.
Gatsby said if Detroit is your idea...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...raindrops at the pane,
The sighing of autumn leaves thrashed by the wind,
Longing to be free, outside, but it must stay
Posing in this place. It must move
As little as possible. This is what the portrait says.
But there is in that gaze a combination
Of tenderness, amusement and regret, so powerful
In its restraint that one cannot look for long.
The secret is too plain. The pity of it smarts,
Makes hot tears spurt: that the soul is not a soul,
Has no secret...Read more of this...



by Service, Robert William
...d with pens you parry;
You call on the hounds of the law your foes to harry.

You with your "Art for its own sake", posing and prinking;
You with your "Live and be merry", eating and drinking;
You with your "Peace at all hazard", from bright blood shrinking.

Fools! I will tell you now: though the red rain patters,
And a million of men go down, it's little it matters. . . .
There's the Flag upflung to the stars, though it streams in tatters.

There...Read more of this...

by Field, Edward
...r with my picture on it
Is hanging on the bulletin board in the Post Office.

I stand by it hoping to be recognized
Posing first full face and then profile

But everybody passes by and I have to admit
The photograph was taken some years ago.

I was unwanted then and I'm unwanted now
Ah guess ah'll go up echo mountain and crah.

I wish someone would find my fingerprints somewhere
Maybe on a corpse and say, You're it.

Description: Male, or reasonably so
White, ...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Posing poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs