Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Straightened Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Bukowski, Charles
...as asleep. She waited a while longer. Then she lifted his head and placed it
on the pillow, lifted his legs and straightened them out on the bed. She stood up, walked
to the fifth, poured a jolt of good whiskey in to her glass, added a touch of water and
drank it sown. She walked to the trailer door, pulled it open, stepped out, closed it. She
walked through the backyard, opened the fence gate, walked up the alley under the one
o'clock moon. The sky wa...Read more of this...



by Nash, Ogden
...l, now I'll eat you!
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry.
Isabel didn't scream or scurry.
She washed her hands and she straightened her hair up,
Then Isabel quietly ate the bear up.
Once in a night as black as pitch
Isabel met a wicked old witch.
the witch's face was cross and wrinkled,
The witch's gums with teeth were sprinkled.
Ho, ho, Isabel! the old witch crowed,
I'll turn you into an ugly toad!
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry,
Isabel didn't scream or scurry,
Sh...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...children, housed 
In her foul den, there at their meat would growl, 
And mock their foster mother on four feet, 
Till, straightened, they grew up to wolf-like men, 
Worse than the wolves. And King Leodogran 
Groaned for the Roman legions here again, 
And Csar's eagle: then his brother king, 
Urien, assailed him: last a heathen horde, 
Reddening the sun with smoke and earth with blood, 
And on the spike that split the mother's heart 
Spitting the child, brake on him, till...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...The fountain bent and straightened itself
In the night wind,
Blowing like a flower.
It gleamed and glittered,
A tall white lily,
Under the eye of the golden moon.
From a stone seat,
Beneath a blossoming lime,
The man watched it.
And the spray pattered
On the dim grass at his feet.
The fountain tossed its water,
Up and up, like silver marbles.
Is that an arm he...Read more of this...

by Heaney, Seamus
...in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Betwe...Read more of this...



by Lindsay, Vachel
...-house square.
Then in an instant all that blear review
Marched on spotless, clad in raiment new.
The lame were straightened, withered limbs uncurled
And blind eyes opened on a new, sweet world.

[Bass drum louder.]

Drabs and vixens in a flash made whole!
Gone was the weasel-head, the snout, the jowl!
Sages and sibyls now, and athletes clean,
Rulers of empires, and of forests green!

[Grand chorus of all instruments. Tambourines to the foreground.]

T...Read more of this...

by Parker, Dorothy
...

There all the things are waxen neat
And set in decorous lines;
And there are posies, round and sweet,
And little, straightened vines.

Her mind lives tidily, apart
From cold and noise and pain,
And bolts the door against her heart,
Out wailing in the rain....Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ur laughing little flask, compelled
Thro' depth to depth more bleak and shady;
As when, both arms beside her held,
Feet straightened out, some gay French lady
Is caught up from life's light and motion,
And dropped into death's silent ocean!

---

Up jumped Tokay on our table,
Like a pygmy castle-warder,
Dwarfish to see, but stout and able,
Arms and accoutrements all in order;
And fierce he looked North, then, wheeling South,
Blew with his bugle a challenge to Drouth,
Cocked h...Read more of this...

by Duhamel, Denise
...ll my image-building attempts go unnoticed, even
 by my friends.
I'm too wimpy to just dye my curls red
or get them straightened. I, sickeningly moral, 

talked about chemicals when I should have been
hanging out with George's pal, Marilyn.
He would have set me right:
Stop your whining and put on this feather tuxedo. Look,
do you want to be famous or not? 

In the latest articles, Boy George is claiming he's not
really happy. Hmm, I think, just like me.Read more of this...

by Nowlan, Alden
...their fire. But just as the sun dropped in the river 
the bull moose gathered his strength 
like a scaffolded king, straightened and lifted his horns 
so that even the wardens backed away as they raised their rifles. 

When he roared, people ran to their cars. All the young men 
leaned on their automobile horns as he toppled....Read more of this...

by Aldington, Richard
...rain drips on your flanks 
And loves you. 
And I have seen the moon 
Slip his silver penny into your pocket 
As you straightened your hair; 
And the white mist curling and hesitating 
Like a bashful lover about your knees. 

I know you, poplar; 
I have watched you since I was ten. 
But if you had a little real love, 
A little strength, 
You would leave your nonchalant idle lovers 
And go walking down the white road 
Behind the waggoners. 

There are beautiful ...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...The best-endowed, the elect,
All by their youth undone,
All, all, by that inhuman
Bitter glory wrecked.

But I have straightened out
Ruin, wreck and wrack;
I toiled long years and at length
Came to so deep a thought
I can summon back
All their wholesome strength.

What images are these
That turn dull-eyed away,
Or Shift Time's filthy load,
Straighten aged knees,
Hesitate or stay?
What heads shake or nod?...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...ead copied Stone --
The Fingers grew too cold
To ache -- and like a Skater's Brook --
The busy eyes -- congealed --

It straightened -- that was all --
It crowded Cold to Cold --
It multiplied indifference --
As Pride were all it could --

And even when with Cords --
'Twas lowered, like a Weight --
It made no Signal, nor demurred,
But dropped like Adamant....Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...d with my stocking feet
And the world came revolving back to me,
I know I looked long at my curled-up fingers,
Before I straightened them and brushed the bark off.
My brother said: "Don't you weigh anything?
Try to weigh something next time, so you won't
Be run off with by birch trees into space."

It wasn't my not weighing anything
So much as my not knowing anything-
My brother had been nearer right before.
I had not taken the first step in knowledge;
I had not l...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Straightened poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things