Famous Telegram Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Mares Nest

by Rudyard Kipling
 Jane Austen Beecher Stowe de Rouse
 Was good beyond all earthly need;
But, on the other hand, her spouse
 Was very, very bad indeed.
He smoked cigars, called churches slow,
And raced -- but this she did not know.

For Belial Machiavelli kept
 The little fact a secret, and,
Though o'er his minor sins she wept,
 Jane Austen did not understand
That Lilly -- thirteen-two...Read more of this...

Morning Coffee

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 Reading the menu at the morning service: 
- Iced Venusberg perhaps, or buttered bum - 
Orders the usual sex-ersatz, and, nervous, 
Glances around - Will she or won't she come? 

The congregation dissected into pews 
Gulping their strip teas in the luminous cavern 
Agape's sacamental berry stews; 
The nickel-plated light and clatter of heaven 

Receive him, temporary Tantalus 
Into...Read more of this...

Manteau Three

by Jorie Graham
 In the fairy tale the sky
 makes of itself a coat
because it needs you
 to put it 
on. How can it do this?
 It collects its motes. It condenses its sound-
track, all the pyrric escapes, the pilgrimages
 still unconsummated, 
the turreted thoughts of sky it slightly liquefies
 and droops, the hum of the yellowest day alive,

office-holders in their books,...Read more of this...

Corn

by Sidney Lanier
 To-day the woods are trembling through and through
With shimmering forms, that flash before my view,
Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue.
The leaves that wave against my cheek caress
Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express
A subtlety of mighty tenderness;
The copse-depths into little noises start,
That sound anon like beatings of a heart,
Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart.
The...Read more of this...

The Future -- never spoke --

by Emily Dickinson
 The Future -- never spoke --
Nor will He -- like the Dumb --
Reveal by sign -- a syllable
Of His Profound To Come --

But when the News be ripe --
Presents it -- in the Act --
Forestalling Preparation --
Escape -- or Substitute --

Indifference to Him --
The Dower -- as the Doom --
His Office -- but to execute
Fate's -- Telegram -- to...Read more of this...

Telegram

by Carl Sandburg
 I SAW a telegram handed a two hundred pound man at a desk. And the little scrap of paper charged the air like a set of crystals in a chemist’s tube to a whispering pinch of salt.
Cross my heart, the two hundred pound man had just cracked a joke about a new hat he got his wife, when the...Read more of this...

Coffee

by Richard Brautigan
 Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee
affords. I once read something about coffee. The thing said that coffee is good for you;
it stimulates all the organs.
I thought at first this was a strange way to put it, and not altogether pleasant, but
as time goes by I have found out that it...Read more of this...

A Soldiers Reprieve

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the United States of America some years ago
An aged father sat at his fireside with his heart full of woe,
And talking to his neighbour, Mr Allan, about his boy Bennie
That was to be shot because found asleep doing sentinel duty. 

"Inside of twenty-four hours, the telegram said,
And, oh! Mr Allan, he's dead, I am afraid.
Where is my...Read more of this...

The Hero of Kalapore

by William Topaz McGonagall
 The 27th Regiment has mutinied at Kalapore;
That was the substance of a telegram, which caused great uproar,
At Sattara, on the evening of the 8th of July,
And when the British officers heard it, they heaved a bitter sigh. 

'Twas in the year of 1857,
Which will long be remembered: Oh! Heaven!
That the Sepoys revolted, and killed their British officers and their...Read more of this...

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