Famous Radar Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Dream Song 63: Bats have no bankers and they do not drink

by John Berryman
 Bats have no bankers and they do not drink
and cannot be arrested and pay no tax
and, in general, bats have it made.
Henry for joining the human race is bats,
known to be so, by few them who think,
out of the cave.

Instead of the cave! ah lovely-chilly, dark,
ur-moist his cousins hang in hundreds or swerve
with personal radar,
crisisless, kid. Instead of the...Read more of this...

Dream Song 21: Some good people daring and subtle voices

by John Berryman
 Some good people, daring & subtle voices
and their tense faces, as I think of it
I see sank underground.
I see. My radar digs. I do not dig.
Cool their flushing blood, them eyes is shut-”
eyes?

Appalled: by all the dead: Henry brooded.
Without exception! All.
ALL.
The senior population waits. Come down! come down!
A ghastly & flashing pause, clothed,
life called; us do.

In a madhouse heard...Read more of this...

Clay comes out to meet Liston

by Muhammad Ali
Clay comes out to meet Liston 
and Liston starts to retreat, 
if Liston goes back an inch farther 
he'll end up in a ringside seat. 
Clay swings with his left, 
Clay swings with his right, 
Look at young Cassius 
carry the fight 
Liston keeps backing, but there's not enough room, 
It's a matter of time till Clay lowers the boom....Read more of this...

Night

by Ruth Padel


Then spoke the thunder, shattering the looming blackness of our national life. The rumble that breaks a spell of the dry season

 – Saro-Wiwa, "The Storm Breaks"



Does a zebra foal dream? Head lower, lower
under lenticular dark cloud,
he drags harlequin fetlocks, porcelain
quails' egg hooflets through pimpling dust,

slower, slower through the silver
rainbow night, this soot and fester
cellar-lighting, electricity of the blue
and evil...Read more of this...

November 1968

by Adrienne Rich
 Stripped
you're beginning to float free
up through the smoke of brushfires
and incinerators
the unleafed branches won't hold you
nor the radar aerials

You're what the autumn knew would happen
after the last collapse
of primary color
once the last absolutes were torn to pieces
you could begin

How you broke open, what sheathed you
until this moment
I know nothing about it
my ignorance of you amazes me
now that I watch...Read more of this...

Bats Ultrasound

by Les Murray
 Sleeping-bagged in a duplex wing
with fleas, in rock-cleft or building
radar bats are darkness in miniature,
their whole face one tufty crinkled ear 
with weak eyes, fine teeth bared to sing. 

Few are vampires. None flit through the mirror. 
Where they flutter at evening's a ***** 
tonal hunting zone above highest C. 
Insect prey at the peak of our hearing 
drone...Read more of this...

Who Runs America?

by Allen Ginsberg
Oil brown smog over Denver 
Oil red dung colored smoke 
level to level across the horizon 

blue tainted sky above 
Oil car smog gasoline 
hazing red Denver's day 

December bare trees 

sticking up from housetop streets 

Plane lands rumbling, planes rise over 

radar wheels, black smoke 

drifts from tailfins 

Oil millions of cars speeding the cracked plains 
Oil from Texas,...Read more of this...

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