Famous Rehearsal Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Arrivals

by Sharon Olds
 I pull the bed slowly open, I
open the lips of the bed, get
the stack of fresh underpants
out of the suitcase—peach, white,
cherry, quince, pussy willow, I
choose a color and put them on,
I travel with the stack for the stack's caress,
dry and soft. I enter the soft
birth-lips of the bed, take off my
glasses, and the cabbage-roses on the curtain
blur to Keats's...Read more of this...

Rehearsal to Ourselves

by Emily Dickinson
 Rehearsal to Ourselves
Of a Withdrawn Delight --
Affords a Bliss like Murder --
Omnipotent -- Acute --

We will not drop the Dirk --
Because We love the Wound
The Dirk Commemorate -- Itself
Remind Us that we died....Read more of this...

Henry Purcell

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell 
 and praises him that, whereas other musicians have 
 given utterance to the moods of man's mind, he has, 
 beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and 
 species of man as created both in him and in all men 
 generally.


Have, fair fallen, O fair,...Read more of this...

Gus: The Theatre Cat

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.
His name, as I ought to have told you before,
Is really Asparagus. That's such a fuss
To pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.
His coat's very shabby, he's thin as a rake,
And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake.
Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats--
But no...Read more of this...

Better -- than Music! For I -- who heard it --

by Emily Dickinson
 Better -- than Music! For I -- who heard it --
I was used -- to the Birds -- before --
This -- was different -- 'Twas Translation --
Of all tunes I knew -- and more --

'Twasn't contained -- like other stanza --
No one could play it -- the second time --
But the Composer -- perfect Mozart --
Perish with him --...Read more of this...

The Refugees

by Randall Jarrell
 In the shabby train no seat is vacant.
The child in the ripped mask
Sprawls undisturbed in the waste
Of the smashed compartment. Is their calm extravagant?
They had faces and lives like you. What was it they possessed
That they were willing to trade for this?
The dried blood sparkles along the mask
Of the child who yesterday possessed
A country welcomer than this.
Did he? All...Read more of this...

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