Famous Spiky Poems by Famous Poets

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

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343. Address to the shade of Thomson

...er, with a matron grace,
 Retreats to Dryburgh’s cooling shade,
Yet oft, delighted, stops to trace
 The progress of the spiky blade.


While Autumn, benefactor kind,
 By Tweed erects his aged head,
And sees, with self-approving mind,
 Each creature on his bounty fed.


While maniac Winter rages o’er
 The hills whence classic Yarrow flows,
Rousing the turbid torrent’s roar,
 Or sweeping, wild, a waste of snows.


So long, sweet Poet of the year!
 Shall bloom that wreath thou w...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


In Back Of The Real

...aving brush 
that's been lying under 
 the garage for a year. 

Yellow, yellow flower, and 
 flower of industry, 
tough spiky ugly flower, 
 flower nonetheless, 
with the form of the great yellow 
 Rose in your brain! 
This is the flower of the World. 

 San Jose, 1954...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

In The Back of the Real

...g brush 
that's been lying under 
the garage for a year. 

Yellow, yellow flower, and 
flower of industry, 
tough spiky ugly flower, 
flower nonetheless, 
with the form of the great yellow 
Rose in your brain! 
This is the flower of the World. ...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

Maidenhair

...g tedious in despair.
But yesterday, awhile before I slept:
I wake to find it live with maidenhair
And mosses to the spiky pendants crept.
Great prodigies there are--Johovah's flood
Widening the margin of the Red Sea shore,--
Great marvel when the moon is turned to blood
It is to mortals, yet I marvel more
At the soft rifts, the pushings at my heart,
That lift the great stones of its rock apart. ...Read more of this...
by Field, Michael

Melpomene

...The forest bitter, spiky,
no shore breeze, no foothills,
the grass grows matted, death will come
with horses' hooves, endlessly
over the steppes' mounds, we went back,
searching the sky for the fort
that could not be razed.

The villages hostile,
the cottages cleared out in haste,
smoked skin on the attic beams,
snare netting, bone amulets.
All over the country an evil reveren...Read more of this...
by Huchel, Peter


Pastoral

...
In a forgotten orchard
Upon the hilly rock!

Oh, grey hill,
Where the grazing herd
Licks the purple blossom,
Crops the spiky weed!
Oh, stony pasture,
Where the tall mullein
Stands up so sturdy
On its little seed!...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

Smoke

...is all smoke
in the throat of eternity. . . .
For centuries, the air was full of witches
Whistling up chimneys
on their spiky brooms
cackling or singing more sweetly than Circe,
as they flew over rooftops
blessing & cursing their
kind.

We banished & burned them
making them smoke in the throat of god;
we declared ourselves
"enlightened."
"The dark age of horrors is past,"
said my mother to me in 1952,
seven years after our people went up in smoke,
leaving a few teeth, a pile ...Read more of this...
by Jong, Erica

the adventures (from frederick and the enchantress – dance drama)

...ed by jabbing spines
  wincing with agony and grief) seeks to hack
  a clear way through
     picking swinging at
  the spiky barricade inch by prickly inch
  smarting with anger bristling with a thin
  itch and tingling of success - acute
  with aching glory the afflicted victim
  of a witch's pique frederick
  frederick the king snips hews chops
  rips slashes cracks cleaves rends pierces
  pierces and shatters into pointless pieces
  this mighty barrier of barbs - comes th...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

The Bee Meeting

...the grocer, the postman, someone I know?

I cannot run, I am rooted, and the gorse hurts me
With its yellow purses, its spiky armory.
I could not run without having to run forever.
The white hive is snug as a virgin,
Sealing off her brood cells, her honey, and quietly humming.

Smoke rolls and scarves in the grove.
The mind of the hive thinks this is the end of everything.
Here they come, the outriders, on their hysterical elastics.
If I stand very still, they will think I am...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

The Hero

...d and thinking-"I know not where we have come
to."
I say to you, "Mother, do not be afraid."
The meadow is prickly with spiky grass, and through it runs
a narrow broken path.
There are no cattle to be seen in the wide field; they have
gone to their village stalls.
It grows dark and dim on the land and sky, and we cannot tell
where we are going.
Suddenly you call me and ask me in a whisper, "What light is
that near the bank?"
Just then there bursts out a fearful yell, and figu...Read more of this...
by Tagore, Rabindranath

The Schooner Flight

..., I shall give you the morning star."
When I left the madhouse I tried other women
but, once they stripped naked, their spiky cunts
bristled like sea eggs and I couldn't dive.
The chaplain came round. I paid him no mind.
Where is my rest place, Jesus? Where is my harbor?
Where is the pillow I will not have to pay for,
and the window I can look from that frames my life?


3 Shabine Leaves the Republic

I had no nation now but the imagination.
After the white man, the niggers d...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek

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