Famous Precise Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Precise poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous precise poems. These examples illustrate what a famous precise poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Amichai, Yehuda
...A precise woman with a short haircut brings order
to my thoughts and my dresser drawers,
moves feelings around like furniture
into a new arrangement.
A woman whose body is cinched at the waist and firmly divided
into upper and lower,
with weather-forecast eyes
of shatterproof glass.
Even her cries of passion follow a certain order,
one after the other:...Read more of this...
by
Stojanovic, Dejan
...late to cause the tides,
Earth is never late to greet the Sun and the Moon;
Thus accidents are not accidents
But precise arrivals at the wrong right time.
Love is almost never simple;
Too often, feelings arrive too soon,
Waiting for thoughts that often come too late.
I wanted too, to be simple and precise
Like the Sun,
Like the Moon,
Like the Earth
But the Earth was booked
Billions of years in advance;
Designed to meet all desires,
All arri...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...,
As best and readiest means of living by;
The same on examination being proved
The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise
And absolute form of faith in the whole world--
Accordingly, most potent of all forms
For working on the world. Observe, my friend!
Such as you know me, I am free to say,
In these hard latter days which hamper one,
Myself--by no immoderate exercise
Of intellect and learning, but the tact
To let external forces work for me,
--Bid the stre...Read more of this...
by
Herrick, Robert
...stuous petticoat--
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility--
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part....Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ent nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born...Read more of this...
by
Grahn, Judy
...a keyboard beside her,
the dark flesh glowing
She whose wet lips nearly swallow
the microphone, whose whiskey voice
is precise and sultry and overwhelming,
she who is princess and harlequin,
athlete and moll and whore and lady,
goddess of the silver screen
the only original American queen
and Helen
when she was an angel
when she went to Hollywood...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...?
Shall we, or shall we not, account him so,
Who died, perhaps, an hundred years ago?
End all dispute; and fix the year precise
When British bards begin t'immortalize?
"Who lasts a century can have no flaw,
I hold that wit a classic, good in law."
Suppose he wants a year, will you compound?
And shall we deem him ancient, right and sound,
Or damn to all eternity at once,
At ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce?
"We shall not quarrel for a year or two;
By courtesy of Englan...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...you plan to tell me next. If I complain,
If I seem an atom peevish at the preference you mention—
Or imply, to be precise—you may believe, or you may not,
That I’m a trifle more aware of what he wants than you are.
But I shouldn’t throw that at you. Make believe that I forgot.
Make believe that he’s a genius, if you like,—but in the meantime
Don’t go back to rocking-horses. There, there, there, now.”
“Make believe!
When you see me standing help...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...earless in a way
a man or woman
could never be? An apparition
with two dark
and urgent eyes and motions
so quick and precise
they were barely motions at all?
When he was gone
you turned, alarmed by the rustling
of oily feathers
and the curious pungency,
and were sure
you'd heard him say the words
that could explain
the meaning of blond grasses
burning on a hillside
beneath the hands of a man
in the middle of
his life caught in the posture
of prayer. I'd
heard th...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...ess urchins heard with blanched cheek
The words of doom "Come in on Saturday".
The master gowned and spectacled, precise,
Trying to rule by methods firm and kind
But always just a little bit behind
The latest villainy, the last device,
Born of some smoothfaced urchin's fertile brain
To irritate the hapless pedagogue,
And first involve him in a mental fog
Then "have" him with the same old tale again.
The "bogus" fight that brought the sergeant down
To tha...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...s
A Paradise within thee, happier far.--
Let us descend now therefore from this top
Of speculation; for the hour precise
Exacts our parting hence; and see!the guards,
By me encamped on yonder hill, expect
Their motion; at whose front a flaming sword,
In signal of remove, waves fiercely round:
We may no longer stay: go, waken Eve;
Her also I with gentle dreams have calmed
Portending good, and all her spirits composed
To meek submission: thou, at season fit,
Let...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...Perception of an object costs
Precise the Object's loss --
Perception in itself a Gain
Replying to its Price --
The Object Absolute -- is nought --
Perception sets it fair
And then upbraids a Perfectness
That situates so far --...Read more of this...
by
Rich, Adrienne
...
Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled
in those spaces of the mind
An eye,
'virile, precise and absolutely certain'
from the mad webs of Uranusborg
encountering the NOVA
every impulse of light exploding
from the core
as life flies out of us
Tycho whispering at last
'Let me not seem to have lived in vain'
What we see, we see
and seeing is changing
the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive
Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart swe...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...tinuum of my attention:
Infinity will hurry his multiplied voice!
Bring the poised impeccable diver,
Summon the skater, precise in figure,
He knows the peril of circumstance,
The risk of movement and the hard ground.
Summon the florist! And the tobacconist!
All who have known a plant-like beauty:
Summon the charming bird for ignorant song.
"You, Athena, with your tired beauty,
Will you give me away? For you must come
In a bathing suit with that white owl
Whom, as I w...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...by look, gesture,
Hearsay. It is another life to the city,
The backing of the looking glass of the
Unidentified but precisely sketched studio. It wants
To siphon off the life of the studio, deflate
Its mapped space to enactments, island it.
That operation has been temporarily stalled
But something new is on the way, a new preciosity
In the wind. Can you stand it,
Francesco? Are you strong enough for it?
This wind brings what it knows not, is
Self--propelled, b...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...els and processions.
2. His paper: his certificate of completion of his apprenticeship.
3. Louke: The precise meaning of the word is unknown, but it
is doubtless included in the cant term "pal".
4. The Cook's Tale is unfinished in all the manuscripts; but in
some, of minor authority, the Cook is made to break off his
tale, because "it is so foul," and to tell the story of Gamelyn, on
which Shakespeare's "As You Like It" is founded. The story is
...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...
freedom which I can't find
nor ever will
until they are dead. In my mind
Delain stands against the wall
precise in detail, steadied
for the betrayal. "La France
C'Est Moi," he cried,
but the irony was lost. Since
I returned to the U.S.
nothing goes well. I stay up
too late, don't sleep,
and am losing weight. Thomas,
I say, is dead, but what use
telling myself what I won't
believe. The hotel quiets
early at nig...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...flame.
He lit his candle, and almost in shame
At his eagerness, lifted his eyes.
The Shadow was there, and its precise
Outline etched the cold, white wall.
The young man swore, "By God! You, Paul,
There's something the matter with your brain.
Go home now and sleep off the strain."
The next day was a storm, the rain
Whispered and scratched at the window-pane.
A grey and shadowless morning filled
The little shop. The watches, chilled,
Were dead and...Read more of this...
by
Levis, Larry
...e the polio
My sister had endured, floating paralyzed
And strapped into her wheelchair all through
That war, seemed too precise. Like photographs . . .
Except disease left nothing. Disease was like
And equation that drank up light & never ended,
Not even in summer. Before my fever broke,
And the pains lessened, I could actually see
Myself, in the exact center of that square.
How still it had become in my absence, & how
Immaculate, windless, sunlit....Read more of this...
by
Nemerov, Howard
...e move along the street inspecting ****.
His sense of it is keener far than mine,
And only when he finds the place precise
He signifies by sniffing urgently
And circles thrice about, and squats, and shits,
Whereon we both with dignity walk home
And just to show who's master I write the poem....Read more of this...
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