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Famous Syntax Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Ginsberg, Allen
...hought, best thought.

Mind is shapely, Art is shapely.

Maximum information, minimum number of syllables.

Syntax condensed, sound is solid.

Intense fragments of spoken idiom, best.

Consonants around vowels make sense.

Savor vowels, appreciate consonants.

Subject is known by what she sees.

Others can measure their vision by what we see.

Candor ends paranoia.


 Kral Majales
 June 25, 1986
 Boulder, Colorado...Read more of this...



by Tessimond, A S J
...The clock disserts on punctuation, syntax.
The clock's voice, thin and dry, asserts, repeats.
The clock insists: a lecturer demonstrating,
Loudly, with finger raised, when the class has gone.

But time flows through the room, light flows through the room
Like someone picking flowers, like someone whistling
Without a tune, like talk in front of a fire,
Like a woman knitting or a ch...Read more of this...

by McHugh, Heather
...re a pock; the depths to which things live
words only glint at. Terns in flight work up
what fond minds might

call syntax. As for that
semantic antic in the distance, is it
whiskered fish, finned cat? Don't settle
just for two. Some bottomographies are

brooded over, and some skies swum through. . ....Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
..."Going to him! Happy letter! Tell him--
Tell him the page I didn't write;
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the pronoun out.

Tell him just how the fingers hurried
Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow-
And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
So you could see what moved them so.

"Tell him it wasn't a practised writer,
You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled;
You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...noun 
 and dash of consciousness together jumping 
 with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna 
 Deus 
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human 
 prose and stand before you speechless and intel- 
 ligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet con- 
 fessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm 
 of thought in his naked and endless head, 
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, 
 yet putting down here what might be left to say 
 in time come after death, 
and r...Read more of this...



by Tebb, Barry
...Geraldine Monk an eleven page review?

At least they care for poetry to give their lives to it

As we do, too.

My syntax far from perfect, my writing illegible

But somehow I’ll get through, Bloodaxe and Carcourt 

May jeer but an Indian printer’s busy with my ‘Collected’

And, Calcutta typesetters permitting, it will be out this year

With the red gold script of sari cloth on the spine

And **** those dusty grey contemporary voices

Those verses will be mine.

Hasl...Read more of this...

by Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)
...since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves 
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh leaning back in my arms
for life's not a ...Read more of this...

by Clampitt, Amy
...y jug jug,
is it cuckoo for that matter?—
much less whether a bird's call
means anything in
particular, or at all.

Syntax comes last, there can be
no doubt of it: came last,
can be thought of (is
thought of by some) as a
higher form of expression:
is, in extremity, first to
be jettisoned: as the diva
onstage, all soaring
pectoral breathwork,
takes off, pure vowel
breaking free of the dry,
the merely fricative
husk of the particular, rises
past saying anything, any
more t...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...
Of the speech I spoil, as it were, with stammering
---More fault of those who had the hammering
Of prosody into me and syntax,
And did it, not with hobnails but tintacks!
But to return from this excursion,---
Just, do you mark, when the song was sweetest,
The peace most deep and the charm completest,
There came, shall I say, a snap---
And the charm vanished!
And my sense returned, so strangely banished,
And, starting as from a nap,
I knew the crone was bewitching my lady,
Wi...Read more of this...

by Graham, Jorie
...is so loud downstairs, bristling with souvenirs.
It's a philosophy of life, of course,
drinks fluorescent, whips of syntax in the air
above the heads -- how small they seem from here,
the bobbing universal heads, stuffing the void with eloquence,
and also tiny merciless darts
of truth. It's pulled on tight, the air they breathe and rip.
It's like a prize the way it's stretched on tight
over the voices, keeping them intermingling, forcing the breaths to

 marry, ma...Read more of this...

by Stone, Ruth
...with sledge hammer
to knock what is the knowing
without knowing into knowledge.
Yes, the tight bag of grammar,
syntax, the clever sidestep
from babble, is a comfortable
prison. A mirror of the mirror.
And all that is uttered in its chains
is locked out from the secret....Read more of this...

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