Famous Tony Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Tony poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous tony poems. These examples illustrate what a famous tony poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...d th'Egyptian Queen defying
Drawn off that fleet she led by flying
Whilst Cesar and his ships crew hollow'd
To see how Tony row'd and follow'd
Oh Action triumph of the Ladies
And plea for her who most afraid is
Then let my conduct work no wonder
When fame who cleaves the air asunder
And every thing in time discovers
Nor council keeps for Kings or Lovers
Yet stoops when tired with States and battles
To Gossips chats and idler tattles
When she I say has given no knowledge
Of...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...I
Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead
we chew it slowly that last apple pie.
Shocked into sleeplessness you're scared of bed.
We never could talk much, and now don't try.
You're like book ends, the pair of you, she'd say,
Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare…
The 'scholar' me, you, worn out on poor pay,
only our silence made u...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...t it was
Only Auntie Nellie I would trust to tie it with
Cotton to a door knob, shut it fast and pull.
13
Tony Harrison, you write hard
While I write soft about
Our common Leeds; we share
A hatred of all grammar schools.
You see Luddite blood while
I dream of Margaret’s first
Menstruation; you see the Aire
As slime, to me it was the
Halcyon’s nesting ground.
14
The Kardomah Caf?
Breathed a smell of coffee
You caught a street away
A roa...Read more of this...
by
Hoagland, Tony
...Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she's a conjugated verb.
She's been doing the direct object
with a second person pronoun named Phil,
and when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:
some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, wou...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...How you became a poet's a mystery!
Wherever did you get your talent from?
I say: I had two uncles, Joe and Harry-
one was a stammerer, the other dumb....Read more of this...
by
Hoagland, Tony
...Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth
and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons ...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...Your bed's got two wrong sides. You life's all grouse.
I let your phone-call take its dismal course:
Ah can't stand it no more, this empty house!
Carrots choke us wi'out your mam's white sauce!
Them sweets you brought me, you can have 'em back.
Ah'm diabetic now. Got all the facts.
(The diabetes comes hard on the track
of two coronar...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.
You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone.
He'd put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a cri...Read more of this...
by
Hoagland, Tony
...If you are lucky in this life,
you will get to help your enemy
the way I got to help my mother
when she was weakened past the point of saying no.
Into the big enamel tub
half-filled with water
which I had made just right,
I lowered the childish skeleton
she had become.
Her eyelids fluttered as I soaped and rinsed
her belly and her chest,
the sorr...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...When the chilled dough of his flesh went in an oven
not unlike those he fuelled all his life,
I thought of his cataracts ablaze with Heaven
and radiant with the sight of his dead wife,
light streaming from his mouth to shape her name,
'not Florence and not Flo but always Florrie.'
I thought how his cold tongue burst into flame
but only literally, which...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...Bottomless pits. There's on in Castleton,
and stout upholders of our law and order
one day thought its depth worth wagering on
and borrowed a convict hush-hush from his warder
and winched him down; and back, flayed, grey, mad, dumb.
Not even a good flogging made him holler!
O gentlemen, a better way to plumb
the depths of Britain's dangling a sch...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...s." She grasped at his
sleeve, "Gervase!
XXXV
What are you doing here? Put down that
sword, That's only poor old Tony, crazed and lame.
We never notice him. With my dear Lord I ought not
to have minded that he came.
But, Gervase, it surprises me that you Should so lack grace
to stay here." With one hand
She held her gaping bodice to conceal Her
breast. "I must demand
Your instant absence. Everard, but new
Returned, will hardly care for guests...Read more of this...
by
Hoagland, Tony
...At this height, Kansas
is just a concept,
a checkerboard design of wheat and corn
no larger than the foldout section
of my neighbor's travel magazine.
At this stage of the journey
I would estimate the distance
between myself and my own feelings
is roughly the same as the mileage
from Seattle to New York,
so I can lean back into the upholstered inter...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...
I think he slapped that Dago's face;
His voice was big an' loud;
An' then he leads me from my place
Through all that tony crowd.
World-famous Louie by the hand
Took me to meet his famous Band.
"Listen, you folks," I heard him say.
"Here's Grand-papa what's come.
Savin' he teached me how to play,
I mighta been a bum.
Come on, Grand-pop, git up an' show
How you kin trumpet Ol' Black Joe."
Tremblin' I played before his Band:
You should have hear...Read more of this...
by
Ayres, Pam
.... . they should have asked my ‘usband, he’d have told’em then and there.
His thoughts on immigration, teenage mothers, Tony Blair,
The future of the monarchy, house prices in the south
The wait for hip replacements, BSE and foot and mouth.
Yes . . . they should have asked my husband he can sort out any mess
He can rejuvenate the railways he can cure the NHS
So any little niggle, anything you want to know
Just run it past my husband, wind him up and let him go.
Con...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...I thought it made me look more 'working class'
(as if a bit of chequered cloth could bridge that gap!)
I did a turn in it before the glass.
My mother said: It suits you, your dad's cap.
(She preferred me to wear suits and part my hair:
You're every bit as good as that lot are!)
All the pension queue came out to stare.
Dad was sprawled beside t...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...'My father still reads the dictionary every day.
He says your life depends on your power to master words.'
Arthur Scargill
Sunday Times, 10 January 1982
Next millennium you'll have to search quite hard
to find my slab behind the family dead,
butcher, publican, and baker, now me, bard
adding poetry to their beef, beer and bread.
With Byro...Read more of this...
by
Hoagland, Tony
...They have little tractors in their blood
and all day the tractors climb up and down
inside their arms and legs, their
collarbones and heads.
That is why they yell and scream and slam the barbells
down into their clanking slots,
making the metal ring like sledgehammers on iron,
like dungeon prisoners rattling their chains.
That is why they shriek ...Read more of this...
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