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Famous Suspension Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Bishop, Elizabeth
...fferent world, 
and a better life, and complete comprehension
of both at last, and immediately, 
after eighteen days of suspension?

Finish your breakfast. The tender is coming, 
a strange and ancient craft, flying a strange and brilliant rag. 
So that's the flag. I never saw it before. 
I somehow never thought of there being a flag,

but of course there was, all along. And coins, I presume,
and paper money; they remain to be seen. 
And gingerly now we...Read more of this...



by Tebb, Barry
...the pictures or the Mecca

While we sat on the pavement

Making up stories.





24



I dream of the Aire

By the suspension bridge

Over the sparkling waters

Of a long gone summer night

Where Margaret’s voice is calling,

“I am here, I am waiting.”



After forty years her voice,

Pure and clear

As I ran and bounded

Scattering the waters’

Rainbows of diamonds.



And the streets were

As they had been

Never and always

Bathed in perpetual sunlight

With n...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...

Mills with trees growing from its top storey, roofless,

Open to the enormous skies of our childhood.



The Aire Suspension Bridge, always my bridge,

Has gone from wartime camouflage grey to

Council green with a traffic island in between

The lanes where lorries roar and silent anglers

Stitched along the shore shelter under the

Giant red, green and yellow umbrellas of Monet.



In the Aire’s clear waters salmon dart and

Giant trout are basking in the sun;

The...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...me --
Me, sure that, despite of time future, time past,
This tick of life-time's one moment you love me!
How long such suspension may linger? Ah, Sweet,
The moment eternal -- just that and no more --
When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core,
While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut, and lips meet!...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...
tures developed. Sometimes I get curious about them, won-

dering if they will turn out all right. They are in suspension

now like seeds in a package. I'll be older when they are de-

veloped and easier to please. Look there's the baby ! Look

there's Mushroom Springs ! Look there's me !

 I caught the limit of trout within an hour of reaching Hell-

diver, and my woman, in all the excitement of good fishing,

let the baby fall asleep directly in the sun and...Read more of this...



by Hikmet, Nazim
...trung
 on strands of golden hair!

But my
poetry's muse
takes to the air
on wings made of steel
like the I-beams
 of my suspension bridges!

I don't pretend
 the nightingale's lament
to the rose isn't easy on the ears...
But the language
 that really speaks to me
are Beethoven sonatas played
on copper, iron, wood, bone, and catgut...

You can "have"
galloping off
in a cloud of dust!
Me, I wouldn't trade
for the purest-bred
 Arabian steed
the sixth mph
...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...stance increases
Significantly; that is, enough to make the point
That the soul is a captive, treated humanely, kept
In suspension, unable to advance much farther
Than your look as it intercepts the picture.
Pope Clement and his court were "stupefied"
By it, according to Vasari, and promised a commission
That never materialized. The soul has to stay where it is,
Even though restless, hearing raindrops at the pane,
The sighing of autumn leaves thrashed by the wind,
Lon...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...

Malnutrition skulls thousands for months
Dysentery drains bowels all at once
Nurse shows disease card Enterostrep
Suspension is wanting or else chlorostrep

Refugee camps in hospital shacks
Newborn lay naked on mother's thin laps
Monkeysized week old Rheumatic babe eye
Gastoenteritis Blood Poison thousands must die

September Jessore Road rickshaw
50,000 souls in one camp I saw
Rows of bamboo huts in the flood 
Open drains, & wet families waiting for food

Border trucks...Read more of this...

by Ammons, A R
...b ****,

wolf **** upon the germicidal ice, snake ****, giraffe
**** that accelerates, secretary bird ****, turtle
**** suspension invites, remora **** slightly in

advance of the shark ****, hornet **** (difficult to
assess), camel **** that slaps the ghastly dry
siliceous, frog ****, beetle ****, bat **** (the

marmoreal), contemptible cat ****, penguin ****,
hermit crab ****, prairie hen ****, cougar ****, eagle
**** (high totem stuff), buffalo **** (hardly less

lofty), o...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...how someone done her wrong,
Wi' sixty seeded sourdoughs all ahollerin' their glee,
When One-eyed Mike uprose an' called suspension of the song.
Says he: "Aloodin' to them twins, their age in months is two,
An' I propose wi' Christmas close, we offer them a tree.
'Twill sure be mighty pleasin' to the ghost o' Lipstick Lou . . ."
"Zen you will be ze Père Noël," said Montreal Maree.

The dance hall of the Nugget Bar erupted joy an' light,
An' set upon the...Read more of this...

by Doty, Mark
...performance,
he swam out the harbor mouth,
into the Atlantic. And though grief

has seemed to me itself a dim,
salt suspension in which I've moved,
blind thing, day by day,

through the wreckage, barely aware
of what I stumbled toward, even I
couldn't help but look

at the way this immense figure
graces the dark medium,
and shines so: heaviness

which is no burden to itself. 
What did you think, that joy
was some slight thing?...Read more of this...

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