Famous Quicksand Poems by Famous Poets

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

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To Posterity

by Bertolt Brecht
 Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.

Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach...Read more of this...

The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower

by Dylan Thomas
 The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb...Read more of this...

Journey Into The Interior

by Theodore Roethke
 In the long journey out of the self,
There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.
The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,
Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring...Read more of this...

Always Unsuitable

by Marge Piercy
 She wore little teeth of pearls around her neck.
They were grinning politely and evenly at me.
Unsuitable they smirked. It is true

I look a stuffed turkey in a suit. Breasts
too big for the silhouette. She knew
at once that we had sex, lots of it

as if I had strolled into her diningroom
in a dirty negligee smelling gamy
smelling fishy and sporting a...Read more of this...

Runagate Runagate

by Robert Hayden
 Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness 
and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror 
and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing 
and the night cold and the night long and the river 
to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning 
and blackness ahead and when shall I reach that somewhere
morning and keep on going and never...Read more of this...

Quicksand Years

by Walt Whitman
 QUICKSAND years that whirl me I know not whither, 
Your schemes, politics, fail—lines give way—substances mock and elude me; 
Only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possess’d Soul, eludes not; 
One’s-self must never give way—that is the final substance—that out of all
 is
 sure; 
Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life—what at last finally remains?
When shows break up, what...Read more of this...

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