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Famous Raw Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Dickinson, Emily
...A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,--
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed hi...Read more of this...



by Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...dition overwhelming
 a swarm of problems;
once there lived
 a certain champion of boiled water,
and inveterate enemy of raw water.

Professor,
 take off your bicycle glasses!
I myself will expound
 those times
 and myself.

I, a latrine cleaner
 and water carrier,
by the revolution
 mobilized and drafted,
went off to the front
 from the aristocratic gardens 
of poetry - 
 the capricious wench
She planted a delicious garden,
the daughter,
 cottage,
 pond
 and meadow.Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...he technology of silence
The rituals, etiquette 

the blurring of terms
silence not absence 

of words or music or even
raw sounds 

Silence can be a plan
rigorously executed 

the blueprint of a life 

It is a presence
it has a history a form 

Do not confuse it
with any kind of absence 


4.

How calm, how inoffensive these words
begin to seem to me 

though begun in grief and anger
Can I break through this film of the abstract 

without wounding myself or you
there is ...Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...e raindrop faintly swaying under the leaf
had no political opinions

and if here or there a house
filled with backed-up raw sewage
or poisoned those who lived there
with slow fumes, over years
the houses were not at war
nor did the tinned-up buildings

intend to refuse shelter
to 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

E...Read more of this...

by Brown, Fleda
...with tears. It always comes 

to that, I don't know why I bother. One gesture 
and she's gone down a well of raw feeling, and I'm left 
alone again. I avert my eyes, to keep from scaring her. 

On her dresser is one of those old glass bottles 
of Jergen's Lotion with the black label, a little round 
bottle of Mum deodorant, a white plastic tray 

with Avon necklaces and earrings, pennies, paper clips, 
and a large black coat button. I appear to ...Read more of this...



by Plath, Sylvia
...ock them down with logic or with luck
 and contradict ourselves for fun;
the waitress holds our coats and we put on
the raw wind like a scarf; love is a faun
 who insists his playmates run. 

Now you, my intellectual leprechaun,
would have me swallow the entire sun
 like an enormous oyster, down
the ocean in one gulp: you say a mark
of comet hara-kiri through the dark
 should inflame the sleeping town. 

So kiss: the drunks upon the curb and dames
in dubious doorways ...Read more of this...

by Moore, Marianne
...feline,
something colubrine" -- how true!
a crouching mythological monster
in that Persian miniature of emerald mines,
raw silk -- ivory white, snow white,
oyster white and six others --
that paddock full of leopards and giraffes --
long lemonyellow bodies
sown with trapezoids of blue.
Alive with words,
vibrating like a cymbal
touched before it has been struck,
he has prophesied correctly --
the industrious waterfall,
"the speedy stream
which violently bears all before i...Read more of this...

by Angelou, Maya
...over
Those behinds,
Men.

One day they hold you in the
Palms of their hands, gentle, as if you
Were the last raw egg in the world. Then
They tighten up. Just a little. The
First squeeze is nice. A quick hug.
Soft into your defenselessness. A little
More. The hurt begins. Wrench out a
Smile that slides around the fear. When the
Air disappears,
Your mind pops, exploding fiercely, briefly,
Like the head of a kitchen match.Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...t always clouded, or too late. 
But I was near and young, and had the reins 
To play with while he manned a team so raw
That only God knows where the end had been 
Of all that riding without Washington. 
There was a nation in the man who passed us, 
If there was not a world. I may have driven 
Since then some restive horses, and alone,
And through a splashing of abundant mud; 
But he who made the dust that sets you on 
To coughing, made the road. Now it seems ...Read more of this...

by Hacker, Marilyn
...seplants, texts,
while an aging woman thinks of sex
in the present tense. Desire may follow,
urgent or elegant, cut raw or mellow
with wine and ripe black figs: a proof, the next
course, a simple question, the complex
response, a burning sweetness she will swallow.
The opening mind is sexual and ready
to embrace, incarnate in its prime.
Rippling concentrically from summer's gold
disc, desire's iris expands, steady
with blood beat. Each time implies the next ti...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...hotographic chamber of the eye
records bare painted walls, while an electric light
lays the chromium nerves of plumbing raw;
such poverty assaults the ego; caught
naked in the merely actual room,
the stranger in the lavatory mirror
puts on a public grin, repeats our name
but scrupulously reflects the usual terror.

Just how guilty are we when the ceiling
reveals no cracks that can be decoded? when washbowl
maintains it has no more holy calling
than physical ablution, and ...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...between,
And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is seen."
The Colonel's son has taken a horse, and a raw rough dun was he,
With the mouth of a bell and the heart of Hell
 and the head of the gallows-tree.
The Colonel's son to the Fort has won, they bid him stay to eat --
Who rides at the tail of a Border thief, he sits not long at his meat.
He's up and away from Fort Bukloh as fast as he can fly,
Till he was aware of his father's mare in the gut of ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ngs? 
And o'er his head the Holy Vessel hung 
Redder than any rose, a joy to me, 
For now I knew the veil had been withdrawn. 
Then in a moment when they blazed again 
Opening, I saw the least of little stars 
Down on the waste, and straight beyond the star 
I saw the spiritual city and all her spires 
And gateways in a glory like one pearl-- 
No larger, though the goal of all the saints-- 
Strike from the sea; and from the star there shot 
A rose-red sparkle to the city,...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...asker of answers becomes as the darkness,
Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest,
Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains.

We hear him and take him among us, like a wind of music,
Like the ghost of a music we have somewhere heard;
We crowd through the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamplight,
We pour in a sinister wave, ascend a stair,
With laughter and cry, and word upon murmured word;
We flow, we descend, we turn . . . and the eternal dreamer
Moves ...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...re by fortune toss,
     My way, my friends, my courser lost,
     I ne'er before, believe me, fair,
     Have ever drawn your mountain air,
     Till on this lake's romantic strand
     I found a fey in fairy land!'—
     XXIII.

     'I well believe,' the maid replied,
     As her light skiff approached the side,—
     'I well believe, that ne'er before
     Your foot has trod Loch Katrine's shore
     But yet, as far as yesternight,
     Old Allan-bane foretol...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...into suns, that wheeling cast 
The planets: then the monster, then the man; 
Tattooed or woaded, winter-clad in skins, 
Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate; 
As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here 
Among the lowest.' 
Thereupon she took 
A bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious past; 
Glanced at the legendary Amazon 
As emblematic of a nobler age; 
Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those 
That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo; 
Ran down the Persian, Grec...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with a saw,
And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw;
I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rocking dark,
I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark;
I had lapped him round with cocoa husk, and drenched him with the oil,
And lashed him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil;
I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side, and tasselled his beard i' the mesh,
An...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...ery trace of man's hand also remains far behind.
Only the matter I see piled up, whence life has its issue,
And the raw mass of basalt waits for a fashioning hand.
Down through its channel of rock the torrent roaringly rushes,
Angrily forcing a path under the roots of the trees.
All is here wild and fearfully desolate. Naught but the eagle
Hangs in the lone realms of air, knitting the world to the clouds.
Not one zephyr on soaring pinion conveys to my hear...Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...
It is not for male or female dogs 
that poodles are clipped 
to topiary hedges. 

If only we could like each other raw. 
If only we could love ourselves 
like healthy babies burbling in our arms. 
If only we were not programmed and reprogrammed 
to need what is sold us. 
Why should we want to live inside ads? 
Why should we want to scourge our softness 
to straight lines like a Mondrian painting? 
Why should we punish each other with scorn 
as if to have a la...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...for you there does hide.

Do forget your parents' abode,
Get accustomed to open heaven
You will sleep on the straw and dirty,
And will meet a blissful end."

Truly, the priest must have heard
On the way back my singing voice
As I of untold happiness
Marveled and rejoiced.



x x x

The other cranes shout "Cour-lee"
Calling a wounded one
When autumn fields around
Are fallow and warm.

And I, being sick, hear calling,
The noise of golden...Read more of this...

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