Famous Splayed Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Splayed poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous splayed poems. These examples illustrate what a famous splayed poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...bout to brush the moss from the name--
Look! an open hand engraved on the tombstone, the grave
of a kohen,
his fingers splayed in a spasm of holiness and blessing,
and here's a grave concealed by a thicket of berries
that has to be brushed aside like a shock of hair
from the face of a beautiful beloved woman....Read more of this...
by
Amichai, Yehuda
...u don't see
its name in the flower books, and
nobody you tell believes
in its odd color or the way
its leaves grow in splayed rows
down the whole length of the page. In fact
the very page smells of spilled
red wine and the mustiness of the sea
on a foggy day - the odor of truth
and of lying.
And the words are so familiar,
so strangely new, words
you almost wrote yourself, if only
in your dreams there had been a pencil
or a pen or even a paintbrush,
if only there had been...Read more of this...
by
Pastan, Linda
...ross the winter sky
From the gates of heaven to Mount St. Mary’s;
On Beeston Hill a haptic wind raises
The ghosts of splayed dead leaves
And light through chandeliers glows
In a thousand shades, pale carousels
In mystic light begin to turn: we take
Our places for the ride and you are
Ten and I am twelve, your hair is blown
And blown again.
40
The bridge over the Aire
Should have had a portcullis
And a tollgate at Crossgreen
To keep safe all in between:
In...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
....
Till there rose, abrupt and lonely,
A ruined abbey, chancel only,
Lichen-crusted, time-befriended,
Soared the arches, splayed and splendid,
Romanesque against the sky.
There in pinnacled protection,
One extinguished family waits
A Church of Ireland resurrection
By the broken, rusty gates.
Sheepswool, straw and droppings cover,
Graves of spinster, rake and lover,
Whose fantastic mausoleum,
Sings its own seablown Te Deum,
In and out the slipping slates....Read more of this...
by
Betjeman, John
...k the blame for: her reach from the beyond.
Still troubles us, the only ones to mourn you, Chris,
Your corn-gold hair splayed like a longship’s mast
You sailed to Valhalla through a sea of passing loves,
The deceits of married men who took your beauty
For a moment’s gift then cast you with your seven year old son adrift.
The sun has gone but birdsong blunders on
As I take courage from the gone, the waving grass,
The sculptured pylons of my shadowed past....Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.
Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.
Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye...Read more of this...
by
Collins, Billy
...ts
of apprehension--I saw
he had a dog!
Who lay half in
half out his doghouse
in the rain, golden head
resting on splayed paws.
He had a ruined car,
and heaps of clothes,
and things to read--
was no emblem,
in other words,
but a citizen,
who'd built a citizen's
household, even
on the literal edge,
while I watched
from my quick,
high place, hurtling
over his encampment
by the waters of Babylon.)
Then we were gone,
in the heat and draft
of our silver, rat...Read more of this...
by
Doty, Mark
...ull.
Mad. I spread the feathers of a gull.
I screw a tight snarl to a weasel.
Fierce. I stitch the flippers on a seal.
Splayed. I pierce the heartbeat of a quail.
I like her to be naked and to kneel.
Tame. My motionless, my living doll.
Mute. And afterwards I like her not to tell....Read more of this...
by
Duffy, Carol Ann
...runts of satisfaction
a comment on the nature of their find
the morning's cool - some fifteen trees
in rows with broad-splayed leaves are caught
by breeze and flutter like the hands
of pale young ladies gathered half-undressed
a car glides past the hedge with muted sound
a lorry chugs uphill - the sky is trembling
out of grey with that first flat blue that says
the sun is indirectly on its way
the breeze is cool but being spain i stand
in short shirt-sleeves - my forearmed ...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...and barren sirs
As you etch on the inner window of your eye
This virgin on her rack:
She, ripe and unplucked, 's
Lain splayed too long in the tortuous boughs: overripe
Now, dour-faced, her fingers
Stiff as twigs, her body woodenly
Askew, she'll ache and wake
Though doomsday bud. Neglect's
Given her lips that lemon-tasting droop:
Untongued, all beauty's bright juice sours.
Tree-twist will ape this gross anatomy
Till irony's bough break....Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
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