Famous Solution Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Girlhood

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Girlhood, the dearest time of joy and love,
The sunny spring of gladness and of peace,
The time that joins its links with heaven above,
And all that's pure below; a running ease
Of careless thought beguiles the murmuring stream
Of girlish life, and as some sweet, vague dream,
The fleeting days go by; fair womanhood
Comes oft to lure the girlish feet away,
But by the brooklet...Read more of this...

Weeping

by Federico García Lorca
 Weeping,
I go down the street
Grotesque, without solution
With the sadness of Cyrano
And Quixote.

Redeeming
Infinite impossiblities
With the rhythm of the clock.

(The captive voice, far away.
Put on a cricket' clothes.)...Read more of this...

Testament

by Wendell Berry
 1.
Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath
Grows large and free in air, don't call it death --
A word to enrich the undertaker and inspire
His surly art of imitating life; conspire
Against him. Say that my body cannot now
Be improved upon; it has no fault to show
To the sly cosmetician. Say that my flesh
Has a perfect compliance with the grass
Truer...Read more of this...

Albert Down Under

by Marriott Edgar
 Albert were what you'd call “thwarted”. 
He had long had an ambition, which... 
Were to save up and go to Australia, 
The saving up that were the hitch. 

He'd a red money box on the pot shelf, 
A post office thing made of tin, 
But with him and his Dad and the bread knife, 
It never had anything in....Read more of this...

The Way Things Work

by Jorie Graham
 is by admitting 
or opening away. 
This is the simplest form 
of current: Blue 
moving through blue; 
blue through purple; 
the objects of desire 
opening upon themselves 
without us; the objects of faith. 
The way things work 
is by solution, 
resistance lessened or 
increased and taken 
advantage of. 
The way things work 
is that we finally believe 
they are...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of A Bachelor

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Listen, ladies, while I sing
The ballad of John Henry King.

John Henry was a bachelor,
His age was thirty-three or four.

Two maids for his affection vied,
And each desired to be his bride,

And bravely did they strive to bring
Unto their feet John Henry King.

John Henry liked them both so well,
To save his life he could not tell

Which he most wished to be...Read more of this...

The Transparent Man

by Anthony Hecht
 I'm mighty glad to see you, Mrs. Curtis,
And thank you very kindly for this visit--
Especially now when all the others here
Are having holiday visitors, and I feel
A little conspicuous and in the way.
It's mainly because of Thanksgiving. All these mothers
And wives and husbands gaze at me soulfully
And feel they should break up their box of chocolates
For a donation, or...Read more of this...

The Thinker

by Robert William Service
 Of all the men I ever knew
The tinkingest was Uncle Jim;
If there were any chores to do
We couldn't figure much on him.
He'd have a thinking job on hand,
And on the rocking-chair he'd sit,
And think and think to beat the band,
And snap his galusus and spit.

We kids regarded him with awe -
His beard browned by tobacco stains,
His hayseed had of...Read more of this...

South Country

by Kenneth Slessor
 After the whey-faced anonymity 
Of river-gums and scribbly-gums and bush, 
After the rubbing and the hit of brush, 
You come to the South Country 
As if the argument of trees were done, 
The doubts and quarrelling, the plots and pains, 
All ended by these clear and gliding planes 
Like an abrupt solution. 

And over the flat earth of empty...Read more of this...

To Lou Andreas-Salome

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 I held myself too open, I forgot
that outside not just things exist and animals
fully at ease in themselves, whose eyes
reach from their lives' roundedness no differently
than portraits do from frames; forgot that I
with all I did incessantly crammed
looks into myself; looks, opinion, curiosity.
Who knows: perhaps eyes form in space
and look on everywhere. Ah, only plunged toward you
does my face...Read more of this...

On The Move Man You Gotta Go

by Thom Gunn
 The blue jay scuffling in the bushes follows 
Some hidden purpose, and the gush of birds 
That spurts across the field, the wheeling swallows, 
Have nested in the trees and undergrowth. 
Seeking their instinct, or their pose, or both, 
One moves with an uncertain violence 
Under the dust thrown by a baffled sense 
Or the dull thunder of approximate...Read more of this...

Statuary

by Nick Flynn
 Bees may be trusted, always, 
 to discover the best, nay, the only 

human, solution. Let me cite 

 an instance; an event, that, 

though occurring in nature, is still 
 in itself wholly abnormal. I refer 

to the manner in which the bees 

 will dispose of a mouse 
 or a slug 

 that may happen to...Read more of this...

Wittgensteins Ladder

by David Lehman
 "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: 
 anyone who understands them eventually recognizes them as 
 nonsensical, when he has used them -- as steps -- to climb 
 up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder 
 after he has climbed up it.)" -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus 

1. 

The first time...Read more of this...

Waiting For The Barbarians

by Constantine P Cavafy
 What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

 The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn't anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?

 Because the barbarians are coming today.
 What laws can the senators make now?
 Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is...Read more of this...

The Solution

by Bertolt Brecht
 After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?...Read more of this...

Rudiger - A Ballad

by Robert Southey
 Author Note: Divers Princes and Noblemen being assembled in a beautiful and fair
Palace, which was situate upon the river Rhine, they beheld a boat or
small barge make toward the shore, drawn by a Swan in a silver chain,
the one end fastened about her neck, the other to the vessel; and in it
an unknown soldier, a man of a comely...Read more of this...

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