Famous Problem Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Problem poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous problem poems. These examples illustrate what a famous problem poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Carroll, Lewis
...r, like the rest of human kind:
But the quondam "careless bachelor" begins to think he knows
The answer to that ancient problem "how the money goes"!...Read more of this...
by
Rilke, Rainer Maria
...aths
the parks expose when the leaves are blown.
Translated by William Gass,
"Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problem of Translation" (Knopf)
Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.
Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine. ...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...ould be all,
I would be merely much: you beat me there.
No, friend, you do not beat me: hearken why!
The common problem, yours, mine, every one's,
Is--not to fancy what were fair in life
Provided it could be,--but, finding first
What may be, then find how to make it fair
Up to our means: a very different thing!
No abstract intellectual plan of life
Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws,
But one, a man, who is man and nothing more,
May lead within a worl...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...r flinch or make
Conditions about any kisses
To follow but took my kiss
Simply as a gift.
58
It’s been a problem ever since
With everyone, no-one else was
So simple, always wanting more or
Less than I could give, when all
There was to follow was more of
The same but this is not meant
As a treatise on the epistemology
Of kissing but more on its
Metaphysics so sadly lacking.
59
You were the only girl who
Did not insist the conditions
Of kiss...Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
...letter that
she would be some place else then in Bishop, thats the way I feel
too.and another thing is my drinking problem. I made up my mind
to quit my drinking, after all what it did to me and what happen.
This is one thing I'll never forget as longs as I live I never want
to go through all this mess again. This sure did teach me lot of things
that I never knew before. So Howard you can let me know soon
as possible. I sure would appreciate it.
...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...year before the water started to boil. It was now October
and there was too much water in the pan. That was the problem. I threw half of the water
into the sink.
The water would boil faster now. It would take only six months. The house was quiet.
I looked out the back porch. There were sacks of garbage there. I stared at the garbage
and tried to figure out what she had been eating lately by studying the containers and
peelings and stuff.Read more of this...
by
Rich, Adrienne
...o homeless old women and roaming children
they had no policy to keep them roaming
or dying, no, the cities were not the problem
the bridges were non-partisan
the freeways burned, but not with hatred
Even the miles of barbed-wire
stretched around crouching temporary huts
designed to keep the unwanted
at a safe distance, out of sight
even the boards that had to absorb
year upon year, so many human sounds
so many depths of vomit, tears
slow-soaking blood
had not offered themse...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...atient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was ...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...ce from other names it was
Made people notice it—and notice her.
(They either noticed it, or got it wrong.)
Her problem was to find out what it asked
In dress or manner of the girl who bore it.
If she could form some notion of her mother—
What she bad thought was lovely, and what good.
This was her mother's childhood home;
The house one story high in front, three stories
On the end it presented to the road.
(The arrangement made a pleasant sunny cellar.Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...oled, with
varying French-German accents.
and!: they
WRITE POETRY TOO. or
PAINT. or
****.
but his big problem is to get down to that mail
box in town to get back his
rejected poems
and to keep his eye on all the other mail boxes
in all his other
houses.
meanwhile, the starving Indians
sell beads and baskets in the streets of the small desert
town.
the Indians are not allowed in his houses
not so much because they are a ****-threat
but because they ...Read more of this...
by
Nesbitt, Kenn
...en go out exploring
the landscape alone.
She’ll build and collect and
she’ll run, jump, and swing.
There’s only one problem…
we don’t learn a thing.
--Kenn Nesbitt
Copyright © Kenn Nesbitt 2016. All Rights Reserved....Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...t was the dry seas-
on and everything was ready to catch on fire anyway, includ-
ing ourselves. The garbage was a problem for a little while
and then we discovered a way to get rid of it.
We took the garbage down to where there were three aban-
doned houses in a row. We carried sacks full of tin cans,
papers, peelings, bottles and Popeyes.
We stopped at the last abandoned house where there were
thousands of old receipts to the San Francisco Chronicle...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...soda. The guy liked the sound
of the alcohol in his drink. He put the glass back on the bar.
"That's no problem, " he said to Mr. Norris. "The best
thing I know for remembering the names of children from
previous marriages, is to go out camping, try a little trout
fishing. Trout fishing is one of the best things in the world
for remembering children's names."
"Is that right?" Mr. Norris said.
"Yeah, " the guy said.
"That s...Read more of this...
by
Collins, Billy
...ratitude, but
the mechanic is calling you over to look
at something under your car. It seems that he has
run into a problem and the job is going
to cost more than he had said and take
much longer than he had thought.
Well, it can't be helped, you hear yourself say
as you return to your place by the workbench,
knowing that as soon as the hammering resumes
you will slowly lift the bottom of the calendar
just enough to reveal a glimpse of what
the future holds in store: ...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...for Ken Kesey and his merry pranksters in a bus called ‘Further...’
Dear _______ and here’s where the problem begins
For who shall I address this letter to?
Friends are few and very special, muses in the main
I must confess, the first I lost just fifty years ago.
Perhaps the best.
I searched for years and wrote en route
‘Bridge Over the Aire’ after that vision and that voice
“I am here. I am waiting”. I followed every lead
Margaret ...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...t is,
No words to say what it really is, that it is not
Superficial but a visible core, then there is
No way out of the problem of pathos vs. experience.
You will stay on, restive, serene in
Your gesture which is neither embrace nor warning
But which holds something of both in pure
Affirmation that doesn't affirm anything.
The balloon pops, the attention
Turns dully away. Clouds
In the puddle stir up into sawtoothed fragments.
I think of the friends
Who c...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...er will
And Heinrich's. 'Twixt her love for Theodore
And him. Sometimes she wished to kill
Herself to solve her problem. For a score
Of reasons Heinrich tempted her. He bore
Her moods with patience, and so surely urged
Himself upon her, she was slowly merged
Into his way of thinking, and to fly
With him seemed easy. But next morning would
The Stradivarius undo her mood.
Then she would realize that she must cleave
Always to Theodore. And she would t...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...I LIKE a church; I like a cowl;
I love a prophet of the soul;
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles;
Yet not for all his faith can see 5
Would I that cowl¨¨d churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure
Which I could not on me endure?
Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phid...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...still, as he were in a trance,
And in his heart he rolled up and down,
"How had this churl imaginatioun
To shewe such a problem to the frere.
Never ere now heard I of such mattere;
I trow* the Devil put it in his mind. *believe
In all arsmetrik* shall there no man find, *arithmetic
Before this day, of such a question.
Who shoulde make a demonstration,
That every man should have alike his part
As of the sound and savour of a fart?
O nice* proude churl, I shrew** hi...Read more of this...
by
Duhamel, Denise
...has displeased" him.
The book says it's up to me to make things all right,
"to restore goodwill, not by talking the problem out,
but by showing concern about the wounded person's
well-being." Forget it, I think, even though I know
if I'm not nice, tampo can quickly escalate into nagdadabog--
foot stomping, grumbling, the slamming
of doors. Instead of talking to my husband, I storm off
to talk to my porcelain Kwan Yin,
the Chinese goddess of mercy
that I bought on ...Read more of this...
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