Famous Pumped Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Dead March

...still. Is Hitler now in the Himalayas?

We are in Cleveland, or Sioux Falls. The architecture
Seems like Omaha, the air pumped in from Düsseldorf.
Cold rain keeps dripping just outside the bars. The testicles

Burst on the table as the commissar
Untwists the vise, removes his gloves, puts down
Izvestia. (Old saboteurs, controlled by Trotsky's

Scheming and unconquered ghost, still threaten Novgorod.)
--And not far from the pits, these bones of ours, 
Burned, bleached, and spl...Read more of this...
by Kees, Weldon


from imperfect Eden

...s given a large pink fluffy ball
my spirit shrank into the nearest wall
true love reduced to this insulting gimcrack
my pumped-up heart was punctured by a tintack...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

Getting There

...ard,
Legs, arms piled outside
The tent of unending cries ----
A hospital of dolls.
And the men, what is left of the men
Pumped ahead by these pistons, this blood
Into the next mile,
The next hour ----
Dynasty of broken arrows!

How far is it?
There is mud on my feet, 
Thick, red and slipping. It is Adam's side,
This earth I rise from, and I in agony.
I cannot undo myself, and the train is steaming.
Steaming and breathing, its teeth
Ready to roll, like a devil's.
There is a mi...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

In The Beginning

...park,
A three-eyed, red-eyed spark, blunt as a flower,
Life rose and spouted from the rolling seas,
Burst in the roots, pumped from the earth and rock
The secret oils that drive the grass.

In the beginning was the word, the word
That from the solid bases of the light
Abstracted all the letters of the void;
And from the cloudy bases of the breath
The word flowed up, translating to the heart
First characters of birth and death.

In the beginning was the secret brain.
The brain...Read more of this...
by Rilke, Rainer Maria

Invocation

...his is for Aline
who taught her lover how to caress the scar.
This is for Eve, who thought of AZT
while hopeful poisons pumped into a vein.
This is for Nanette in the Midwest.
This is for Alicia, shaking back dark hair,
dancing one-breasted with the Sabbath bride.
This is for Judy on a mountainside,
plunging her gloved hands in a glistening hive.
Hilda, Patricia, Gaylord, Emilienne,
Tania, Eunice: this is for everyone
who marks the distance on a calendar
from what's less like...Read more of this...
by Hacker, Marilyn


Killers

....
There was a driving wind of city dust and horse dung blowing and he stood at an intersection of five sewers and there pumped the bullets of an automatic pistol into another man, a fellow citizen.
Therefore, the prosecuting attorneys, fellow citizens, and a jury of his peers, also fellow citizens, listened to the testimony of other fellow citizens, policemen, doctors, and after a verdict of guilty, the judge, a fellow citizen, said: I sentence you to be hanged by the neck ti...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

Late Summer Fires

.... The hardcourt game.
Logs that fume are mostly cattle,

inverted, stubby. Tree stumps are kilns.
Walloped, wiped, hand-pumped,
even this day rolls over, slowly.

At dusk, a family drives sheep 
out through the yellow
of the Aboriginal flag....Read more of this...
by Murray, Les

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

...Looking glass upon the wall,
who is fairest of us all?
And the mirror would reply,
You are the fairest of us all.
Pride pumped in her like poison.

Suddenly one day the mirror replied,
Queen, you are full fair, 'tis true,
but Snow White is fairer than you.
Until that moment Snow White
had been no more important
than a dust mouse under the bed.
But now the queen saw brown spots on her hand
and four whiskers over her lip
so she condemned Snow White
to be hacked to death.
Bring ...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

The Defective Record

...Cut the bank for the fill.
Dump sand
pumped out of the river
into the old swale

killing whatever was
there before—including
even the muskrats. Who did it?
There's the guy.

Him in the blue shirt and
turquoise skullcap.
Level it down
for him to build a house

on to build a
house on to build a house on
to build a house
on to build a house on to . . ....Read more of this...
by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)

The Double Image

...day life made you well and whole
I let the witches take away my guilty soul.
I pretended I was dead
until the white men pumped the poison out,
putting me armless and washed through the rigamarole
of talking boxes and the electric bed.
I laughed to see the private iron in that hotel.
Today the yellow leaves
go *****. You ask me where they go I say today believed
in itself, or else it fell.

Today, my small child, Joyce,
love your self's self where it lives.
There is no special...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

The Early Purges

...oft paws scraping like mad. But their tiny din
Was soon soused. They were slung on the snout 
Of the pump and the water pumped in.

'Sure, isn't it better for them now?' Dan said.
Like wet gloves they bobbed and shone till he sluiced
Them out on the dunghill, glossy and dead.

Suddenly frightened, for days I sadly hung
Round the yard, watching the three sogged remains
Turn mealy and crisp as old summer dung

Until I forgot them. But the fear came back
When Dan trapped big rat...Read more of this...
by Heaney, Seamus

The Flight Of The Duchess

...ast of it:
And now it is made---why, my heart's blood, that went trickle,
Trickle, but anon, in such muddy driblets,
Is pumped up brisk now, through the main ventricle,
And genially floats me about the giblets.
I'll tell you what I intend to do:
I must see this fellow his sad life through---
He is our Duke, after all,
And I, as he says, but a serf and thrall.
My father was born here, and I inherit
His fame, a chain he bound his son with;
Could I pay in a lump I should prefer ...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

The Red Retreat

...s and legs went soarin' in the fountain of their blood.

For on they came like bee-swarms, a-hochin' and a-singin';
 We pumped the bullets into 'em, we couldn't miss a shot.
But though we mowed 'em down like grass, like grass was they a-springin',
 And all our 'ands was blistered, for our rifles was so 'ot.
We roared with battle-fury, and we lammed the stuffin' out of 'em,
 And then we fixed our bay'nets and we spitted 'em like meat.
You should 'ave 'eard the beggars squeal; ...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Shooting Of Dan McGrew

...ed in the dark,
And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark.
Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew,
While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that's known as Lou.

These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.
They say that the stranger was crazed with "hooch", and I'm not denying it's so.
I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two --
The w...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Three Voices

...ly huddled on a chair,
In attitudes of blank despair: 

Oysters were not more mute than they,
For all their brains were pumped away,
And they had nothing more to say - 

Save one, who groaned "Three hours are gone!"
Who shrieked "We'll wait no longer, John!
Tell them to set the dinner on!" 

The vision passed: the ghosts were fled:
He saw once more that woman dread:
He heard once more the words she said. 

He left her, and he turned aside:
He sat and watched the coming tide
A...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

Wanting to Die

...an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection....Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

Wanting To Die

...an old would,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

leaving the page of a book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection....Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

Well Water

...ng an errand to your errand. Saying,
"Since you're up . . ." Making you a means to
A means to a means to) is well water
Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world.
The pump you pump the water from is rusty
And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel
A sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny
Inexorable hours. And yet sometimes
The wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty
Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear
Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands
And g...Read more of this...
by Jarrell, Randall

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