Famous Statement Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Creed

...
Or make, or spoil, or bless, or blast, 
Is curse or blessing justly due 
For sloth or effort in the past. 
My life's a statement of the sum 
Of vice indulged, or overcome. 

I know that in my lives to be 
My sorry heart will ache and burn, 
And worship, unavailingly, 
The woman whom I used to spurn, 
And shake to see another have 
The love I spurned, the love she gave. 

And I shall know, in angry words, 
In gibes, and mocks, and many a tear, 
A carrion flock of homing-birds...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John


Advent

...t ask for reason's payment,
The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
Nor analyse God's breath in common statement.
We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour-
And Christ comes with a January flower....Read more of this...
by Kavanagh, Patrick

Anna Who Was Mad

...me up like cream pudding.
Take me in.
Take me.
Take.

Give me a report on the condition of my soul.
Give me a complete statement of my actions.
Hand me a jack-in-the-pulpit and let me listen in.
Put me in the stirrups and bring a tour group through.
Number my sins on the grocery list and let me buy.
Did I make you go insane?
Did I turn up your earphone and let a siren drive through?
Did I open the door for the mustached psychiatrist
who dragged you out like a gold cart?
Did ...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

Beowulf (Modern English)

...more wise
in making arrangements at such a young age.
You are mighty in power and wise in your heart,
thoughtful in statement. I hold fast to the hope
that if it should occur that the spear should seize,
blood-grim battle, the heir of Hrethel,
either disease or iron, should take your lord,
the herdsman of his people, and you still have life,
that the Sea-Geats could not have a better choice
for their king, the hoard-guardian of heroes,
if you wished to receive your...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Do People moulder equally

...e be standing here --
A Sort, that shall not taste of Death --
If Jesus was sincere --

I need no further Argue --
That statement of the Lord
Is not a controvertible --
He told me, Death was dead --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily


Epitaph On A Disturber Of His Times

...the upturned nerve;
Its importunate cry, too laxly curved:
And you drew us an oboe-outline, clean and acute;
Unadorned statement, accurately carved.

We expected the screen, the background for reverie
Which cloudforms usefully weave:
And you built the immaculate, adamant, blue-green steel
Arch of a balanced wave.

We expected a pool with flowers to diffuse and break
The child-round face of the mirrored moon:
And you blazed a rock-path, begun near the sun, to be finished
By t...Read more of this...
by Tessimond, A S J

Exhilaration is the Breeze

...Exhilaration is the Breeze
That lifts us from the Ground
And leaves us in another place
Whose statement is not found --

Returns us not, but after time
We soberly descend
A little newer for the term
Upon Enchanted Ground --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

In Due Form

...ent.
Your look is thorough.
Your stay-beside-me is a pillow
To roll over on
And sleep as on my own upon.

But make me a statement
In due form on endless foolscap
Witnessed before a notary
And sent by post, registered,
To be signed for on receipt
And opened under oath to believe;
An antique paper missing from my strong-box,
A bond to clutch when hail tortures the chimney
And lightning circles redder round the city,
And your brisk step and thorough look
Are gallant but uncircum...Read more of this...
by Jackson, Laura Riding

Live

...e maggots,
sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother,
the damn *****!

Even so,
I kept right on going on,
a sort of human statement,
lugging myself as if
I were a sawed-off body
in the trunk, the steamer trunk.
This became perjury of the soul.
It became an outright lie
and even though I dressed the body
it was still naked, still killed.
It was caught
in the first place at birth,
like a fish.
But I play it, dressed it up,
dressed it up like somebody's doll.

Is life something yo...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

Memories of West Street and Lepke

...ized Fifties,
and I am forty. Ought I to regret my seedtime?
I was a fire-breathing Catholic C.O.,
and made my manic statement,
telling off the state and president, and then
sat waiting sentence in the bull pen
beside a ***** boy with curlicues
of marijuana in his hair.

Given a year,
I walked on the roof of the West Street Jail, a short
enclosure like my school soccer court,
and saw the Hudson River once a day
through sooty clothesline entanglements
and bleachi...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Robert

Statement of Being

...I am a grave poetic hen
That lays poetic eggs
And to enhance my temperament
A little quiet begs.

We make the yolk philosophy,
True beauty the albumen.
And then gum on a shell of form
To make the screed sound human....Read more of this...
by Pound, Ezra

The Generations of Men

...y marrying father 
No more than brought us back into the name." 
"One ought not to be thrown into confusion 
By a plain statement of relationship, 
But I own what you say makes my head spin. 
You take my card--you seem so good at such things-- 
And see if you can reckon our cousinship. 
Why not take seats here on the cellar wall 
And dangle feet among the raspberry vines?" 
"Under the shelter of the family tree." 
"Just so--that ought to be enough protection." 
"Not from the ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

The Little Old Lady in Lavender Silk

...ood and simoom.

When you come to this time of abatement,
To this passing from Summer to Fall,
It is manners to issue a statement
As to what you got out of it all.

So I'll say, though reflection unnerves me
And pronouncements I dodge as I can,
That I think (if my memory serves me)
There was nothing more fun than a man!

In my youth, when the crescent was too wan
To embarrass with beams from above,
By the aid of some local Don Juan
I fell into the habit of love.

And I learne...Read more of this...
by Parker, Dorothy

The Maple

...n eye on the maple 
but I think your real life 
would miss you. The story 
here is that all morning
I've thought of the statement 
that art is about loneliness
while watching golden leaves 
become unhinged. 
By ones or in bunches 
they tumble and hang 
for a moment like a dress 
in the dryer.
At the laundromat 
you've seen the arms 
thrown out to catch the shirt 
flying the other way.
Just as you've stood 
at the bottom of a gray sky 
in a pile of leaves 
trying to lick them ...Read more of this...
by Hicok, Bob

They have not chosen me he said

..."They have not chosen me," he said,
"But I have chosen them!"
Brave -- Broken hearted statement --
Uttered in Bethlehem!

I could not have told it,
But since Jesus dared --
Sovereign! Know a Daisy
They dishonor shared!...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

Was not was all the Statement

..."Was not" was all the Statement.
The Unpretension stuns --
Perhaps -- the Comprehension --
They wore no Lexicons --

But lest our Speculation
In inanition die
Because "God took him" mention --
That was Philology --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

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