Famous Possibility Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Possibility poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous possibility poems. These examples illustrate what a famous possibility poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Amy Levy
To B. T.
Dead-tired, dog-tired, as the vivid day
Fails and slackens and fades away.--
The sky that was so blue before
With sudden clouds is shrouded o'er.
Swiftly, stilly the mists uprise,
Till blurred and grey the landscape lies.
* * * * * * *
All day we have plied the oar; all day
Eager and keen have said our say
On life and death, on love...Read more of this...
by
Rafael Guillen
Not fear. Maybe, out there somewhere,
the possibility of fear; the wall
that might tumble down, because it's for sure
that behind it is the sea.
Not fear. Fear has a countenance;
It's external, concrete,
like a rifle, a shot bolt,
a suffering child,
like the darkness that's hidden
in every human mouth.
Not fear. Maybe only the brand
of the offspring of fear.
It's a narrow, interminable street
with all the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Size circumscribes -- it has no room
For petty furniture --
The Giant tolerates no Gnat
For Ease of Gianture --
Repudiates it, all the more --
Because intrinsic size
Ignores the possibility
Of Calumnies -- or Flies....Read more of this...
by
A R Ammons
1) An individual spider web
identifies a species:
an order of instinct prevails
through all accidents of circumstance,
though possibility is
high along the peripheries of
spider
webs:
you can go all
around the fringing attachments
and find
disorder ripe,
entropy rich, high levels of random,
numerous occasions of accident:
2) the possible settings
of a web are infinite:
how...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Our own possessions -- though our own --
'Tis well to hoard anew --
Remembering the Dimensions
Of Possibility....Read more of this...
by
Marvin Bell
This year,
I'm raising the emotional ante,
putting my face
in the leaves to be stepped on,
seeing myself among them, that is;
that is, likening
leaf-vein 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...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
We miss a Kinsman more
When warranted to see
Than when withheld of Oceans
From possibility
A Furlong than a League
Inflicts a pricklier pain,
Till We, who smiled at Pyrenees --
Of Parishes, complain....Read more of this...
by
Marianne Moore
This institution,
perhaps one should say enterprise
out of respect for which
one says one need not change one's mind
about a thing one has believed in,
requiring public promises
of one's intention
to fulfill a private obligation:
I wonder what Adam and Eve
think of it by this time,
this firegilt steel
alive with goldenness;
how bright it shows --
"of circular traditions and impostures,
committing many spoils,"
requiring all one's criminal ingenuity
to...Read more of this...
by
Erin Belieu
This hideous,
upholstered in gift-wrap fabric, chromed
in places, design possibility
for the future canned ham.
Its genius
wonderful, circa I993.
I've assumed a great many things:
the perversity of choices, affairs
I did or did not have.
But let the record show
that I was happy.
O let the hideous chair
stand! For the Chinese apothecary
with his roots and fluids;
for Paoul at the bank;
for the young woman in Bailey's Drug,
expert...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
There comes a time in every man's life
when he thinks: I have never had a single
original thought in my life
including this one & therefore I shall
eliminate all ideas from my poems
which shall consist of cats, rice, rain
baseball cards, fire escapes, hanging plants
red brick houses where I shall give up booze
and organized...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
That after Horror -- that 'twas us --
That passed the mouldering Pier --
Just as the Granite Crumb let go --
Our Savior, by a Hair --
A second more, had dropped too deep
For Fisherman to plumb --
The very profile of the Thought
Puts Recollection numb --
The possibility -- to pass
Without a Moment's Bell --
Into Conjecture's presence --
Is like a Face of Steel...Read more of this...
by
A R Ammons
I look for the way
things will turn
out spiralling from a center,
the shape
things will take to come forth in
so that the birch tree white
touched black at branches
will stand out
wind-glittering
totally its apparent self:
I look for the forms
things want to come as
from what black wells of possibility,
how a thing will
unfold:
not the shape on paper -- though
that, too -- but the
uninterfering means on...Read more of this...
by
Aleister Crowley
"Aug." 10, 1911.
Full moon to-night; and six and twenty years
Since my full moon first broke from angel spheres!
A year of infinite love unwearying ---
No circling seasons, but perennial spring!
A year of triumph trampling through defeat,
The first made holy and the last made sweet
By this same love; a year of wealth and woe,
Joy, poverty, health, sickness --- all one glow
In...Read more of this...
by
Tupac Shakur
In the event of my Demise
when my heart can beat no more
I Hope I Die For A Principle
or A Belief that I had Lived 4
I will die Before My Time
Because I feel the shadow's Depth
so much I wanted 2 accomplish
before I reached my Death
I have come 2 grips with the possibility
and wiped the last tear from My eyes
I Loved All...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Daisy follows soft the Sun --
And when his golden walk is done --
Sits shyly at his feet --
He -- waking -- finds the flower there --
Wherefore -- Marauder -- art thou here?
Because, Sir, love is sweet!
We are the Flower -- Thou the Sun!
Forgive us, if as days decline --
We nearer steal to Thee!
Enamored of the parting West --
The...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
I see neither the means of joining myself to Thee,
nor the possibility of living for the space of a breath
separated from Thee. I have not the courage to drive
out the torments I endure. Oh! how difficult my plight,
how strange my grief, how exquisite my pain!...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I dwell in Possibility --
A fairer House than Prose --
More numerous of Windows --
Superior -- for Doors --
Of Chambers as the Cedars --
Impregnable of Eye --
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky --
Of Visitors -- the fairest --
For Occupation -- This --
The spreading wide of narrow Hands
To gather Paradise --...Read more of this...
by
Marilyn Hacker
Spring wafts up the smell of bus exhaust, of bread
and fried potatoes, tips green on the branches,
repeats old news: arrogance, ignorance, war.
A cinder-block wall shared by two houses
is new rubble. On one side was a kitchen
sink and a cupboard, on the other was
a bed, a bookshelf, three framed photographs.
Glass is shattered across the photographs;
two half-circles of hardened pocket bread
sit...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Impossibility, like Wine
Exhilarates the Man
Who tastes it; Possibility
Is flavorless -- Combine
A Chance's faintest Tincture
And in the former Dram
Enchantment makes ingredient
As certainly as Doom --...Read more of this...
by
Les Murray
Sprawl is the quality
of the man who cut down his Rolls-Royce
into a farm utility truck, and sprawl
is what the company lacked when it made repeated efforts
to buy the vehicle back and repair its image.
Sprawl is doing your farm work by aeroplane, roughly,
or driving a hitchhiker that extra hundred miles home.
It is the rococo of being your own still...Read more of this...
by
Wendell Berry
I.
The poem is important, but
not more than the people
whose survival it serves,
one of the necessities, so they may
speak what is true, and have
the patience for beauty: the weighted
grainfield, the shady street,
the well-laid stone and the changing tree
whose branches spread above.
For want of songs and stories
they have dug away the soil,
paved over what is left,
set up their perfunctory walls
in tribute...Read more of this...
by
Lewis Carroll
PREFACE
If---and the thing is wildly possible---the charge of writing
nonsense were ever brought against the author of this brief but
instructive poem, it would be based, I feel convinced, on the line
``Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes''
In view of this painful possibility, I will not (as I might) appeal
indignantly to my other writings...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[I feel considerable hesitation in venturing
to offer this version of a poem which Carlyle describes to be 'a
beautiful piece (a very Hans Sacks beatified, both in character
and style), which we wish there was any possibility of translating.'
The reader will be aware that Hans Sachs was the celebrated Minstrel-
Cobbler of Nuremberg, who Wrote 208 plays,...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
What I can do -- I will --
Though it be little as a Daffodil --
That I cannot -- must be
Unknown to possibility --...Read more of this...
by
Razvan Tupa
A Romanian body is the other
to whom you transfer all that you are
you always had a cousin at school who’d seen who’d done it all
he was the Romanian body for each of us
who’d trafficked in luxury cars for each of us
as our debt as our possibility
the same for any fear in the hair on...Read more of this...
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