Famous Single File Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Those Were The Days

by Philip Levine
 The sun came up before breakfast, 
perfectly round and yellow, and we 
dressed in the soft light and shook out 
our long blond curls and waited 
for Maid to brush them flat and place 
the part just where it belonged. 
We came down the carpeted stairs 
one step at a time, in single file, 
gleaming in our sailor suits,...Read more of this...

Depressed By A Book Of Bad Poetry I Walk Toward An Unused Pasture And Invite The Insects To Join Me

by James Wright
 Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone.
I climb a slight rise of grass.
I do not want to disturb the ants
Who are walking single file up the fence post,
Carrying small white petals,
Casting shadows so frail that I can see through them.
I close my eyes for a moment and listen.
The old grasshoppers
Are tired, they leap heavily now,
Their thighs are...Read more of this...

Now let no charitable hope

by Elinor Wylie
 Now let no charitable hope 
Confuse my mind with images 
Of eagle and of antelope: 
I am by nature none of these. 

I was, being human, born alone; 
I am, being woman, hard beset; 
I live by squeezing from a stone 
What little nourishment I get. 

In masks outrageous and austere 
The years go by in single file; 
But...Read more of this...

American Feuillage

by Walt Whitman
 AMERICA always! 
Always our own feuillage! 
Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the
 cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas! 
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New
 Mexico!
 Always soft-breath’d Cuba! 
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes
 drain’d
 by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the...Read more of this...

A Life

by Sylvia Plath
 Touch it: it won't shrink like an eyeball,
This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear.
Here's yesterday, last year ---
Palm-spear and lily distinct as flora in the vast
Windless threadwork of a tapestry.

Flick the glass with your fingernail:
It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stir
Though nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.
The inhabitants are light as...Read more of this...

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