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Famous Review Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...re sure to lose me.


 So, sir, you see ’twas nae daft vapour;
But I maturely thought it proper,
When a’ my works I did review,
To dedicate them, sir, to you:
Because (ye need na tak it ill),
I thought them something like yoursel’.


 Then patronize them wi’ your favor,
And your petitioner shall ever——
I had amaist said, ever pray,
But that’s a word I need na say;
For prayin, I hae little skill o’t,
I’m baith dead-sweer, an’ wretched ill o’t;
But I’se repeat each poor man’s p...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...This is the place. Stand still, my steed,
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
The forms that once have been.

The Past and Present here unite
Beneath Time's flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
But seen on either side.

Here runs the highway to the town;
There the green lane descends,
Through which I walked to church with thee,
O gentlest of my friends!

The shadow of the ...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...me; 
And since a friendly concourse centers here 
America's own sons, begin O muse! 
Now thro' the veil of ancient days review 
The period fam'd when first Columbus touch'd 
The shore so long unknown, thro' various toils, 
Famine and death, the hero made his way, 
Thro' oceans bestowing with eternal storms. 
But why, thus hap'ly found, should we resume 
The tale of Cortez, furious chief, ordain'd 
With Indian blood to dye the sands, and choak 
Fam'd Amazonia's stream with dea...Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...e Aleppo sort, 
Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange! 

Thy pardon for this long and tedious case, 
Which, now that I review it, needs must seem 
Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth! 
Nor I myself discern in what is writ 
Good cause for the peculiar interest 
And awe indeed this man has touched me with. 
Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness 
Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus: 
I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills 
Like an old lion's cheek teeth. Out the...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...God's acre of memory, 
Marking stones, in my reverence, 
"I loved them until they loved me." 

Pictures pass me in long review,-- 
Marching columns of dead events. 
I was tender, and, often, true; 
Ever a prey to coincidence. 
Always knew I the consequence; 
Always saw what the end would be. 
We're as Nature has made us -- hence 
I loved them until they loved me....Read more of this...
by Parker, Dorothy



...ith, we began upon all sorts of talk! 
"He's no bad fellow, Blougram; he had seen 
"Something of mine he relished, some review: 
"He's quite above their humbug in his heart, 
"Half-said as much, indeed--the thing's his trade. 
"I warrant, Blougram's sceptical at times: 
"How otherwise? I liked him, I confess!" 


Che che , my dear sir, as we say at Rome, 
Don't you protest now! It's fair give and take; 
You have had your turn and spoken your home-truths: 
The hand's mine now,...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...seen, 
Its prose forgotten; as against the green
Of Mother Nature, uniformed in blue, 
The soldiers pass for Sheridan's review.
The motion-music of the moving throng, 
Is like a silent tune, set to a wordless song.



LIX.
The guides and trailers, weird in war's array, 
Precede the troops along the grassy way. 
They chant wild songs, and, with loud noise and stress, 
In savage manner savage joy express.
The Indian captives, blanketed in red, 
On ponies mounted, by the scouts ...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...houlders of a dowager
with no time for sentimentality.

With no time for sentimentality,
mulling a twice-postponed book-review,
you take an empty seat. Opposite you
a voluble immigrant family
is already unwrapping garlicky
sausages—an unshaven man and his two
red-eared sons.
You once wrote: it is true,
awful, and unimportant, finally
that if the opportunity occurs
some of the exiles become storm-troopers;
and you try, culpably, to project these three
into some torch-lit futur...Read more of this...
by Hacker, Marilyn
...Woman wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty.
Love is woman's moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun.
Woman lives but in her lord;
Count to ten, and man is bored.
With this the gist and sum of it,
What earthly good can come of it?...Read more of this...
by Parker, Dorothy
...saw not, but led his ***** ones there
Round and round the mighty court-house square.
Then in an instant all that blear review
Marched on spotless, clad in raiment new.
The lame were straightened, withered limbs uncurled
And blind eyes opened on a new, sweet world.

[Bass drum louder.]

Drabs and vixens in a flash made whole!
Gone was the weasel-head, the snout, the jowl!
Sages and sibyls now, and athletes clean,
Rulers of empires, and of forests green!

[Grand chorus of all ...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel
...happy.

from Breathing In, Breathing Out, Anhinga Press, 2002
© 2000, Fleda Brown
(first published in The Southern Review, 36 [2000])
...Read more of this...
by Brown, Fleda
...hom Gunn really the age-old sleaze-weasel Andrew Duncan says?

Is Tim Allen right to give Geraldine Monk an eleven page review?

At least they care for poetry to give their lives to it

As we do, too.

My syntax far from perfect, my writing illegible

But somehow I’ll get through, Bloodaxe and Carcourt 

May jeer but an Indian printer’s busy with my ‘Collected’

And, Calcutta typesetters permitting, it will be out this year

With the red gold script of sari cloth on the spine...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...the verse forever wear-- 
Time cannot bend the line which God hath writ. 

Always the general show of things 
Floats in review before my mind, 
And such true love and reverence brings, 
That sometimes I forget that I am blind. 

But now there comes unsought, unseen, 
Some clear divine electuary, 
And I, who had but sensual been, 
Grow sensible, and as God is, am wary. 

I hearing get, who had but ears, 
And sight, who had but eyes before, 
I moments live, who lived but years,...Read more of this...
by Thoreau, Henry David
...bike, gets shouted at by rude parkies

And writing huffy poems to prove it...



Oh to be acceptable and

IN THE POETRY REVIEW

Like Lavinia or Jo

With double spreads

And a glossy colour photo

Instead I’m stuck in a bus queue at Morden

London’s meridian point of zero imagination

Actually it’s a bit like ACUMEN with the Oxleys

Boasting about their 150,000 annual submissions-

If what they print’s the best God help the rest...)

At least my Christmas post had - instead of...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...all':
Ghosts soon unite anew.
The process scarcely hurts at all -
Not more than when YOU're what you call
'Cut up' by a Review. 

"The Fifth is one you may prefer
That I should quote entire:-
THE KING MUST BE ADDRESSED AS 'SIR.'
THIS, FROM A SIMPLE COURTIER,
IS ALL THE LAWS REQUIRE: 

"BUT, SHOULD YOU WISH TO DO THE THING
WITH OUT-AND-OUT POLITENESS,
ACCOST HIM AS 'MY GOBLIN KING!
AND ALWAYS USE, IN ANSWERING,
THE PHRASE 'YOUR ROYAL WHITENESS!' 

"I'm getting rather hoarse, I...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...ds.

After falling off a steamship or being swept away
in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope
for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand
turning the pages of an album of photographs-
you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.

How about a short animated film, a slide presentation?
Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph?
Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash?
Your whole existence going off in your face
in an eyebrow-singe...Read more of this...
by Collins, Billy
...OF DUST
A Symphony

BY
CONRAD AIKEN

To Jessie

NOTE

. . . Parts of this poem have been printed in "The North American
Review, Others, Poetry, Youth, Coterie, The Yale Review". . . . I am
indebted to Lafcadio Hearn for the episode called "The Screen Maiden"
in Part II.


 This text comes from the source available at 
 Project Gutenberg, originally prepared by Judy Boss 
 of Omaha, NE.

THE HOUSE OF DUST


PART I.


I.

The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The tre...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad
...In some old abbey, or a trout not stale, 
Or distant lightning on the horizon by night, 
Or a fresh rainbow, or a grand review 
Of thirty regiments in red, green, and blue. 

LXII 

Then he address'd himself to Satan: 'Why — 
My good old friend, for such I deem you, though 
Our different parties make us fight so shy, 
I ne'er mistake you for a personal foe; 
Our difference is political, and I 
Trust that, whatever may occur below, 
You know my great respect for you; and this ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...hit with 
"Only the Lonely," trying his best to sound like Elvis.

© 1999, Fleda Brown
(first published in The Iowa Review, 29 [1999])
...Read more of this...
by Brown, Fleda
...p mind, that laughter and that passion?



And what have I to show?

A few pamphlets, a small ‘Selected’, a single good review.

Sat in South Kensington on the way to the Institut I wrote this,

Too frightened even to phone you....Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry