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Famous Turned Down Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Betjeman, John
...into the place.

She moved the table of bottles
Away from the bed to the wall;
And tiptoeing gently over the stairs
Turned down the gas in the hall....Read more of this...



by Berryman, John
....

Then went he mildly by, and around behind

my cabin, and when I followed, there he just sat.
Only at last
he turned down around, passing my wife at four feet
and hopped the whole lawn and made thro' the hedge for the big 
 house.
—Mr Bones, we all brutes & fools....Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...Unfunny uncles who insist
in trying on a lady's hat,
--oh, even if the joke falls flat,
we share your slight transvestite twist

in spite of our embarrassment.
Costume and custom are complex.
The headgear of the other sex
inspires us to experiment.

Anandrous aunts, who, at the beach
with paper plates upon your laps,
keep putting on the yachtsm...Read more of this...

by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)
...d by white curtains—
Smell of cleanliness—

Sunshine of late afternoon—
On the glass tray

a glass pitcher, the tumbler
turned down, by which

a key is lying— And the
immaculate white bed...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Robert
...
he'd rather marry.

One dark night
my Tutor Ford climbed the hill's skull;
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down
they lay together hull to hull
where the graveyard shelves on the town....
My mind's not right.

A car radio bleats
"Love, O careless Love...." I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat....
I myself am hell;
nobody's here--

only skunks, that searc...Read more of this...



by Simic, Charles
...ard-working ant.
I'm just sitting here mulling over
What to do this dark, overcast day?
It was a night of the radio turned down low,
Fitful sleep, vague, troubling dreams.
I woke up lovesick and confused.
I thought I heard Estella in the garden singing
And some bird answering her,
But it was the rain. Dark tree tops swaying
And whispering. "Come to me my desire,"
I said. And she came to me by and by,
Her breath smelling of mint, her tongue
Wetting my c...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...igrant mother who died when Brenda was fifteen

But still she managed to read Proust on her day off

As a library girl, turned down by David Jenkins,

‘As rising star of the left’ for a place at Leeds

To read theology started her as a protest poet

Sitting out on the English lawn, mistaken for a snow sculpture

In the depths of winter.

Her sit-in protest lasted seven months,

Months, eight hours a day, her libellous verse scorching

The academic groves of Leeds in sheet...Read more of this...

by Herrick, Robert
...Silvia, do you remember
the moments, in your mortal life,
when beauty still shone
in your sidelong, laughing eyes,
and you, light and thoughtful,
went 
beyond girlhood’s limits?

The quiet rooms and the streets
around you, sounded
to your endless singing,
when you sat, happily content,
intent, on that woman’s work,
the vague future, arriving alive in your ...Read more of this...

by Pound, Ezra
...red the event,
that much was ominous.
With middle-ageing care
I had laid out just the right books.
I had almost turned down the pages.

Beauty is so rare a thing.
So few drink of my fountain.

So much barren regret,
So many hours wasted!
And now I watch, from the window,
the rain, the wandering busses.

"Their little cosmos is shaken" - 
the air is alive with that fact.
In their parts of the city
they are played on by diverse forces.
How do I k...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Turned Down poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs