Famous Surgery Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Break Away

by Anne Sexton
 Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce:
the courtroom a cement box,
a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me
and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land
for the Jew in me,
but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us—
and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors
that makes the now separate parts useless,
even to cut each other up...Read more of this...

Eidólons

by Walt Whitman
 I MET a Seer, 
Passing the hues and objects of the world, 
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, To glean Eidólons. 
 Put in thy chants, said he, 
No more the puzzling hour, nor day—nor segments, parts, put in,
Put first before the rest, as light for all, and entrance-song of all, That of
 Eidólons. 
 Ever the...Read more of this...

It knew no Medicine --

by Emily Dickinson
 It knew no Medicine --
It was not Sickness -- then --
Nor any need of Surgery --
And therefore -- 'twas not Pain --

It moved away the Cheeks --
A Dimple at a time --
And left the Profile -- plainer --
And in the place of Bloom

It left the little Tint
That never had a Name --
You've seen it on a Cast's face --
Was...Read more of this...

Train Ride

by John Wheelwright
 For Horace Gregory

After rain, through afterglow, the unfolding fan
of railway landscape sidled onthe pivot
of a larger arc into the green of evening;
I remembered that noon I saw a gradual bud
still white; though dead in its warm bloom;
always the enemy is the foe at home.
And I wondered what surgery could recover
our lost, long stride of indolence and leisure
which is labor...Read more of this...

Train Ride

by Federico García Lorca
 After rain, through afterglow, the unfolding fan
of railway landscape sidled onthe pivot
of a larger arc into the green of evening;
I remembered that noon I saw a gradual bud
still white; though dead in its warm bloom;
always the enemy is the foe at home.
And I wondered what surgery could recover
our lost, long stride of indolence and leisure
which is labor in reverse;...Read more of this...

On Living

by Nazim Hikmet
 I

Living is no laughing matter:
 you must live with great seriousness
 like a squirrel, for example--
 I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
 I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
 you must take it seriously,
 so much so and to such a degree
 that, for example, your hands tied behind your...Read more of this...

The Double Image

by Anne Sexton
 1.

I am thirty this November.
You are still small, in your fourth year.
We stand watching the yellow leaves go *****,
flapping in the winter rain.
falling flat and washed. And I remember
mostly the three autumns you did not live here.
They said I'd never get you back again.
I tell you what you'll never really know:
all the medical hypothesis
that explained my brain will never...Read more of this...

Elm

by Sylvia Plath
for Ruth Fainlight


I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root;
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it.
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone...Read more of this...

View From The Inner City

by Barry Tebb
 Leeds this silent solemn Sunday

Tempest Road is clear of all

But wistful birds, parked cars

And vagrant trees.

The surgery and pharmacy are shuttered tight

"Get your medication straight into your bag",

The friendly GP gravely warned, "The junks

Lay in wait to grab and run from those no longer young

The building site’s scaffolding of bone

Masks pristine piles of bricks where

May winds mourn and moan...Read more of this...

I tie my Hat -- I crease my Shawl

by Emily Dickinson
 I tie my Hat -- I crease my Shawl --
Life's little duties do -- precisely --
As the very least
Were infinite -- to me --

I put new Blossoms in the Glass --
And throw the old -- away --
I push a petal from my gown
That anchored there -- I weigh
The time 'twill be till six o'clock
I have so much to do...Read more of this...

No You Be A Lone Eagle

by Ogden Nash
 I find it very hard to be fair-minded
About people who go around being air-minded.
I just can't see any fun
In soaring up up up into the sun
When the chances are still a fresh cool orchid to a paper geranium
That you'll unsoar down down down onto your (to you) invaluable
cranium.
I know the constant refrain
About how safer up in God's trafficless heaven...Read more of this...

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