Famous Tightening Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Venetian Glass

by Amy Lowell
 As one who sails upon a wide, blue sea
Far out of sight of land, his mind intent
Upon the sailing of his little boat,
On tightening ropes and shaping fair his course,
Hears suddenly, across the restless sea,
The rhythmic striking of some towered clock,
And wakes from thoughtless idleness to time:
Time, the slow pulse which beats eternity!
So through the vacancy of busy life
At...Read more of this...

The Guardian Angel Of The Little Utopia

by Jorie Graham
 Shall I move the flowers again?
Shall I put them further to the left
into the light?
Win that fix it, will that arrange the
thing?
Yellow sky.
Faint cricket in the dried-out bush.
As I approach, my footfall in the leaves
drowns out the cricket-chirping I was
coming close to hear 
Yellow sky with black leaves rearranging it.
Wind rearranging the black leaves in it.
But anyway I am...Read more of this...

Ariosto. Orlando Furioso Canto X 91-99

by Alan Seeger
 Ruggiero, to amaze the British host, 
And wake more wonder in their wondering ranks, 
The bridle of his winged courser loosed, 
And clapped his spurs into the creature's flanks; 
High in the air, even to the topmost banks 
Of crudded cloud, uprose the flying horse, 
And now above the Welsh, and now the Manx, 
And now across the sea...Read more of this...

The Ballad of the Red Earl

by Rudyard Kipling
 (It is not for them to criticize too minutely
the methods the Irish followed, though they might deplore some of
their results. During the past few years Ireland had been going
through what was tantamount to a revolution. -- EARL SPENCER)



Red Earl, and will ye take for guide
 The silly camel-birds,
That ye bury your head in an Irish thorn,
 On a desert...Read more of this...

8 Fragments For Kurt Cobain

by Jim Carroll
 1/
Genius is not a generous thing
In return it charges more interest than any amount of royalties can cover
And it resents fame
With bitter vengeance 

Pills and powdres only placate it awhile
Then it puts you in a place where the planet's poles reverse
Where the currents of electricity shift 

Your Body becomes a magnet and pulls to it despair and rotten teeth,
Cheese...Read more of this...

Etude Realiste

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 A Baby's feet, like sea-shells pink,
Might tempt, should heaven see meet,
An angel's lips to kiss, we think,
A baby's feet.

Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat
They stretch and spread and wink
Their ten soft buds that part and meet.

No flower-bells that expand and shrink
Gleam half so heavenly sweet
As shine on life's untrodden brink
A baby's feet.

II.

A baby's hands, like rosebuds furled
Whence yet no...Read more of this...

Casualty

by Seamus Heaney
 I

He would drink by himself
And raise a weathered thumb
Towards the high shelf,
Calling another rum
And blackcurrant, without
Having to raise his voice,
Or order a quick stout
By a lifting of the eyes
And a discreet dumb-show
Of pulling off the top;
At closing time would go
In waders and peaked cap
Into the showery dark,
A dole-kept breadwinner
But a natural for work.
I loved his whole manner,
Sure-footed but too...Read more of this...

Deeply Morbid

by Stevie Smith
 Deeply morbid deeply morbid was the girl who typed the letters
Always out of office hours running with her social betters
But when daylight and the darkness of the office closed about her
Not for this ah not for this her office colleagues came to doubt her
It was that look within her eye
Why did it always seem to say goodbye?

Joan her name...Read more of this...

Hospital Window

by Allen Ginsberg
At gauzy dusk, thin haze like cigarette smoke 
ribbons past Chrysler Building's silver fins 
tapering delicately needletopped, Empire State's 
taller antenna filmed milky lit amid blocks 
black and white apartmenting veil'd sky over Manhattan, 
offices new built dark glassed in blueish heaven--The East 
50's & 60's covered with castles & watertowers, seven storied 
tar-topped house-banks over York Avenue, late may-green...Read more of this...

Morning Express

by Siegfried Sassoon
ALONG the wind-swept platform pinched and white 
The travellers stand in pools of wintry light 
Offering themselves to morn¡¯s long slanting arrows.
The train¡¯s due; porters trundle laden barrows.
The train steams in volleying resplendent clouds 5
Of sun-blown vapour. Hither and about 
Scared people hurry storming the doors in crowds.
The officials seem to waken with a shout 
Resolved to hoist and plunder;...Read more of this...

Whispers of Immortality

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 WEBSTER was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,

He...Read more of this...

The New Knighthood

by Rudyard Kipling
 Who gives him the Bath?
"I," said the wet,
Rank-Jungle-sweat,
"I'll give him the Bath!" 

Who'll sing the psalms?
"We," said the Palms.
"Ere the hot wind becalms,
"We'll sing the psalms."

Who lays on the sword ?
"I," said the Sun,
Before he has done,
"I'll lay on the sword."

"Who fastens his belt?
"I," said Short-Rations,
" I know all the fashions
"Of tightening a belt!"

Who gives him his spur?
"I," said...Read more of this...

You cannot make Remembrance grow

by Emily Dickinson
 You cannot make Remembrance grow
When it has lost its Root --
The tightening the Soil around
And setting it upright
Deceives perhaps the Universe
But not retrieves the Plant --
Real Memory, like Cedar Feet
Is shod with Adamant --
Nor can you cut Remembrance down
When it shall once have grown --
Its Iron Buds will sprout anew
However overthrown --...Read more of this...

All Night All Night

by Delmore Schwartz
 "I have been one acquainted with the night" - Robert Frost


Rode in the train all night, in the sick light. A bird
Flew parallel with a singular will. In daydream's moods and
 attitudes
The other passengers slumped, dozed, slept, read,
Waiting, and waiting for place to be displaced
On the exact track of safety or the rack of accident.

Looked out at the night,...Read more of this...

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