Famous Possibilities Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Possibilities poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous possibilities poems. These examples illustrate what a famous possibilities poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Gregory, Rg
...ldn't find it in their legs
to fetch the bone - its glowing
had a phosphorescent feel
a beauty that repelled
the simple possibilities of eating
so it went on all day
the bone stayed cold - the frost
around it sparkled and the dogs
came and went returning then
with other dogs
the concourse
disturbed the neighbourhood
with excitement and unease
when the night came
there was no moon
no light to catch the frost
dogs began to venture
through the rubble
advancing then retreatin...Read more of this...
by
Berryman, John
...& the saddhu in maha mudra, the great River,
and Henry was happy & beside him with excitement.
Beside himself, his possibilities;
salaaming hours of half-blind morning
while the rainy lepers salaamed back,
smiles & a passion of their & his eyes flew
in feelings not ever accorded solely to oneself....Read more of this...
by
Jobe, James Lee
...cstatic.
"Forgive," said The Christ, and why not? Every day
that you still breathe has all the joy
and murderous possibilities of your bravest dream.
Forgive. Breathe. Live. The moon has entered Virgo,
the wind shifts, blows up from the Delta, cools this valley,
and you are not beaten; the children sing, it is Bach,
and you are brave, alive, and human....Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...heroine, and each man a friend!
Aladdin's Lamp, and Fortunatus' Purse,
That holds the treasures of the universe!
All possibilities are in its hands,
No danger daunts it, and no foe withstands;
In its sublime audacity of faith,
"Be thou removed!" it to the mountain saith,
And with ambitious feet, secure and proud,
Ascends the ladder leaning on the cloud!
As ancient Priam at the Sc?an gate
Sat on the walls of Troy in regal state
With the old men, too old and weak to...Read more of this...
by
Silverstein, Shel
...
As she melted to smoke.
It might be a shadowy trace
Of a tear that runs down an angel's face.
Nothing has more possibilities
Than one old wet picture puzzle piece....Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...Ay, lay him 'neath the Simla pine --
A fortnight fully to be missed,
Behold, we lose our fourth at whist,
A chair is vacant where we dine.
His place forgets him; other men
Have bought his ponies, guns, and traps.
His fortune is the Great Perhaps
And that cool rest-house down the glen,
Whence he shall hear, as spirits may,
Our mundance revel ...Read more of this...
by
Ammons, A R
...soon would carry
away our ignorance with the world-better
let the mixed-up mix and let the surface shine
with all the possibilities, each in itself....Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...sition of promises together
In one piece of surface, letting one ramble
Back home from them so that these
Even stronger possibilities can remain
Whole without being tested. Actually
The skin of the bubble-chamber's as tough as
Reptile eggs; everything gets "programmed" there
In due course: more keeps getting included
Without adding to the sum, and just as one
Gets accustomed to a noise that
Kept one awake but now no longer does,
So the room contains this flow like an hou...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...itself becomes a friend,
The confidant of intimate hopes and fears;
A place where are engendered pleasant thoughts,
And possibilities before unguessed
Come to fruition born of sympathy.
And as in some gay garden stretched upon
A genial southern slope, warmed by the sun,
The flowers give their fragrance joyously
To the caressing touch of the hot noon;
So books give up the all of what they mean
Only in a congenial atmosphere,
Only when touched by reverent hands, and read
By...Read more of this...
by
Brooks, Gwendolyn
...ghts and steadies,
To hie to a house that does not holler, to ring
Bells elsetime, better presently to cater
To no more Possibilities, to get
Away. Perhaps the money can be posted.
Perhaps they two may choose another Slum!
Some serious sooty half-unhappy home!--
Where loathe-lover likelier may be invested.
Keeping their scented bodies in the center
Of the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall,
They allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall,
Are off at what t...Read more of this...
by
Rilke, Rainer Maria
...Look how the same possibilities
unfold in their opposite demeanors,
as though one saw different ages
passing through two identical rooms.
Each thinks that she props up the other,
while resting wearily on her support;
and they can't make use of one another,
for they cause blood to rest on blood,
when as in the former times they softly touch
and try, along the tree-lined ...Read more of this...
by
Skillman, Judith
...eking out their own
individual deaths, their pink flesh peeling
against the rocks. I saw the spool of eggs,
endless possibilities that would not be.
How they labored to breathe the air that night,
caught under our queen-sized bed, the male
and the female, Silvers and Kings whose pale
eyes saw into the lidless dark. I could tell
they loved each other without speech, circling
there apart from water, and I remembered
a snippet from a French film in which a woman
mast...Read more of this...
by
Kramberger, Taja
...is 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 you thinking,
this is Europe. No one
foresaw the exit from Eden,
no one...Read more of this...
by
Bell, Marvin
...ein to artery, leaf to flesh,
the passage of a leaf in autumn
to the passage of autumn,
branch-tip and winter spaces
to possibilities, and possibility
to God. Even on East 61st Street
in the blowzy city of New York,
someone has planted a gingko
because it has leaves like fans like hands,
hand-leaves, and sex. Those lovely
Chinese hands on the sidewalks
so far from delicacy
or even, perhaps, another gender of gingko--
do we see them?
No one ever treated us so gently
as...Read more of this...
by
Bronk, William
...What we are? We say we want to become
what we are or what we have an intent to be.
We read the possibilities, or try.
We get to some. We think we know how to read.
We recognize a word, here and there,
a syllable: male, it says perhaps,
or female, talent -- look what you could do
or love, it says, love is what we mean.
Being at any cost: in the end, the cost
is terrible but so is the lure to us.
We see it move and shine and swallo...Read more of this...
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