Famous Temporary Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Affirmation

...die 
at her strongest and most beautiful. 
New women come and go. All go. 
The pretty lover who announces 
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand. 
Another friend of decades estranges himself 
in words that pollute thirty years. 
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge 
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything....Read more of this...
by Hall, Donald


Al Aaraaf

...ering star.

'Twas a sweet time for Nesace- for there
Her world lay lolling on the golden air,
Near four bright suns- a temporary rest-
An oasis in desert of the blest.
Away- away- 'mid seas of rays that roll
Empyrean splendor o'er th' unchained soul-
The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)
Can struggle to its destin'd eminence,-
To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode
And late to ours, the favor'd one of God-
But, now, the ruler of an anchor'd realm,
She thro...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan

Assurances

...e
 air
 on purpose—and that I shall one day be eligible to do as much as they, and more than
 they;
I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on, millions of years; 
I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have their exteriors—and
 that
 the eye-sight has another eye-sight, and the hearing another hearing, and the voice
 another
 voice; 
I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are provided for—and
 that
 the deaths of young w...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Bishop Blougrams Apology

...ve, you know-- 
We're still at that admission, recollect!) 
Where do you find--apart from, towering o'er 
The secondary temporary aims 
Which satisfy the gross taste you despise-- 
Where do you find his star?--his crazy trust 
God knows through what or in what? it's alive 
And shines and leads him, and that's all we want. 
Have we aught in our sober night shall point 
Such ends as his were, and direct the means 
Of working out our purpose straight as his, 
Nor bring a moment'...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Blind

...It's okay if the world goes with Venetian;
Who cares what Italians don't see?--
Or with Man's Bluff (a temporary problem
Healed by shrieks and cheating)--or with date:
Three hours of squirming repaid by laughs for years.

But when an old woman, already deaf,
Wakes from a night of headaches, and the dark
Won't disappear--when doctors call like tedious
Birds, "If only..." up and down hospital halls--
When, long-distance, I hear her say, "Don't worry.

Honey, I'...Read more of this...
by Webb, Charles


Crossing Nation

...ut up or Else Loonybin or Slam

Leroi on bum gun rap, $7,000
 lawyer fees, years' negotiations--
SPOCK GUILTY headlined temporary, Joan Baez'
 paramour husband Dave Harris to Gaol
Dylan silent on politics, & safe--
 having a baby, a man--
Cleaver shot at, jail'd, maddened, parole revoked,

Vietnam War flesh-heap grows higher,
 blood splashing down the mountains of bodies
 on to Cholon's sidewalks--
Blond boys in airplane seats fed technicolor
 Murderers advance w/ Death-chord...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

For the Record

...es were non-partisan
the freeways burned, but not with hatred

Even the miles of barbed-wire
stretched around crouching temporary huts
designed to keep the unwanted
at a safe distance, out of sight
even the boards that had to absorb
year upon year, so many human sounds

so many depths of vomit, tears
slow-soaking blood
had not offered themselves for this
The trees didn't volunteer to be cut into boards
nor the thorns for tearing flesh
Look around at all of it

and ask whose s...Read more of this...
by Rich, Adrienne

Huddersfield - The Second Poetry Capital Of England

...’s killer alsatian had more civilisation than

Huddersfield’s Deputy Direction of Education.

For a while I was granted temporary asylum at Royds Hall -

At least some of the staff there had socialism if not art -

But soon it was spoilt for everyone when Jenks came to head

English, sweating for his OU degree and making us all suffer,

The kids hating his sarcasm and the staff his vaulting ambition

And I was the only one not afraid of him. His Achilles’ heel was

Culture - ...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

In Abbot Zan's Room at Dayun Temple: Four Poems (4)

...Hide away right time after Meet talk agree deep heart How can all restrain mouth Offer goodbye return cane riding crop Temporary part end turn head Vast expanse mud defile person Listen country many dogs Although not free yoke Sometimes come rest rush about Near you like white snow Grasp hot upset how be  The boy draws shining water from the well, He nimbly lifts the bucket to his hand. He sprinkles water without soaking the earth, And sweeps so w...Read more of this...
by Fu, Du

In The Baggage Room At Greyhound

...
 in electric light the night before I quit, 
the racks were created to hang our possessions, to keep 
 us together, a temporary shift in space, 
God's only way of building the rickety structure of 
 Time, 
to hold the bags to send on the roads, to carry our 
 luggage from place to place 
looking for a bus to ride us back home to Eternity 
 where the heart was left and farewell tears 
 began. 

 IV

A swarm of baggage sitting by the counter as the trans- 
 continental bus pu...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

Mazeppa

...e,
And we are half-way, struggling o'er 
To yon unknown and silent shore.
The waters broke my hollow trance,
And with a temporary strength
My stiffened limbs were rebaptized.
My courser's broad breast proudly braves,
And dashes off the ascending waves,
And onward we advance
We reach the slippery shore at length,
A haven I but little prized,
For all behind was dark and drear
And all before was night and fear.
How many hours of night or day
In those suspended pangs I lay,
I cou...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Morning Coffee

...s in the luminous cavern 
Agape's sacamental berry stews; 
The nickel-plated light and clatter of heaven 

Receive him, temporary Tantalus 
Into the Lookingglassland's firescape. 
Suckled on Jungfraumilch his eyes discuss, 
The werwolf twins, their mock Sabellian rape. 

This is their time to reap the standing scorn, 
Blonde Rumina's crop. Beneath her leafless tree 
Ripe-rumped she lolls and clasps the plenteous horn. 
Cool customers who defy his Trinity 

Feel none the less,...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)

Rembrandt to Rembrandt

...ife—which is the food 
Of art that has betrayed itself alive 
And is a food of hell. She might have heard
Unhappily the temporary noise 
Of louder names than yours, and on frail urns 
That hardly will ensure a dwelling-place 
For even the dust that may be left of them, 
She might, and angrily, as like as not,
Look soon to find your name, not finding it. 
She might, like many another born for joy 
And for sufficient fulness of the hour, 
Go famishing by now, and in the eyes 
O...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Second Poem

...ssors.
I know if I could shave myself the bugs around my face would 
 disappear forever.
The holes in my shues are only temporary, I understand that.
My rug is dirty but whose that isent?
There comes a time in life when everybody must take a piss in 
 the sink -here let me paint the window black for a minute.
Thro a plate & brake it out of naughtiness-or maybe just 
 innocently accidentally drop it wile walking around the 
 tabol.
Before the mirror I look like a sahara desert...Read more of this...
by Orlovsky, Peter

Temporary Poem Of My Time

...Hebrew writing and Arabic writing go from east to west,
Latin writing, from west to east.
Languages are like cats:
You must not stroke their hair the wrong way.
The clouds come from the sea, the hot wind from the desert,
The trees bend in the wind,
And stones fly from all four winds,
Into all four winds. They throw stones,
Throw this land, one at the other...Read more of this...
by Amichai, Yehuda

The Arrival of the Bee Box

...rce of honey 
So why should they turn on me? 
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free. 

The box is only temporary....Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

The Emigrants: Book II

...emains, but of the cataract,
Or surly breeze of night, that mutters low
Among the thickets, where she trembling seeks
A temporary shelter--clasping close
To her hard-heaving heart, her sleeping child,
All she could rescue of the innocent groupe
That yesterday surrounded her--Escap'd
Almost by miracle! Fear, frantic Fear,
Wing'd her weak feet: yet, half repentant now
Her headlong haste, she wishes she had staid
To die with those affrighted Fancy paints
The lawless soldier's vi...Read more of this...
by Turner Smith, Charlotte

The Withdrawal

...a room and a fire,
cold starlight blowing through an open window—
whither?

 2
After sunfall, heaven is melodramatic,
a temporary, puckering, burning green.
The patched-up oak
and blacker, indelible pines
have the indigestible meagerness of spines.

One wishes heaven had less solemnity:
a sensual table
with five half-filled bottles of red wine
set round the hectic carved roast—
Bohemia for ourselves
and the familiars of a lifetime
charmed to communion by resurrection—
running...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Robert

Thoughts

...f This Union, soak’d, welded in blood—of the solemn price paid—of the
 unnamed
 lost, ever present in my mind; 
—Of the temporary use of materials, for identity’s sake, 
Of the present, passing, departing—of the growth of completer men than any yet, 
Of myself, soon, perhaps, closing up my songs by these shores, 
Of California, of Oregon—and of me journeying to live and sing there;
Of the Western Sea—of the spread inland between it and the spinal river, 
Of the great pastoral...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

While The Bannock Bakes

...sspent lives,
Beside the camp-fire there we sat -- what tales you told to me
Of love and hate, and chance and fate, and temporary wives!
In Rory Borealis Land, beside the Arctic Sea.

One yarn you told me in those days I can remember still;
It seemed as if I visioned it, so sharp you sketched it in;
Bellona was the name, I think; a coast town in Brazil,
Where nobody did anything but serenade and sin.
I saw it all -- the jewelled sea, the golden scythe of sand,
The stately pil...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

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