Famous Twists Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Pulled From A Life Some Leaves

by Barry Tebb
 Pulled from a life some leaves in evergreen

Or dressed like fragrant crinoline draped

Over shadows by di Chirico, stolen

From a station where trains never run

And set up in a tableau in the parsonage at Haworth

The three sisters with Chekovian overtones

Stood round the table where their mirrored forms

Await the blast of the last judgement’s call to make them

Take that final walk...Read more of this...

The Night-Fire

by Claude McKay
 No engines shrieking rescue storm the night, 
And hose and hydrant cannot here avail; 
The flames laugh high and fling their challenging light, 
And clouds turn gray and black from silver-pale. 
The fire leaps out and licks the ancient walls, 
And the big building bends and twists and groans. 
A bar drops from its place; a rafter falls 
Burning...Read more of this...

Spring Day

by Amy Lowell
 Bath
The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is 
a smell of tulips and narcissus
in the air.
The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and 
bores through the water
in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It 
cleaves the water
into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.
Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of...Read more of this...

An Aquarium

by Amy Lowell
 Streaks of green and yellow iridescence,
Silver shiftings,
Rings veering out of rings,
Silver -- gold --
Grey-green opaqueness sliding down,
With sharp white bubbles
Shooting and dancing,
Flinging quickly outward.
Nosing the bubbles,
Swallowing them,
Fish.
Blue shadows against silver-saffron water,
The light rippling over them
In steel-bright tremors.
Outspread translucent fins
Flute, fold, and relapse;
The threaded light prints through them on the pebbles
In scarcely tarnished twinklings.
Curving of spotted spines,
Slow up-shifts,
Lazy convolutions:
Then a...Read more of this...

Christmass

by John Clare
 Christmass is come and every hearth
Makes room to give him welcome now
Een want will dry its tears in mirth
And crown him wi a holly bough
Tho tramping neath a winters sky
Oer snow track paths and ryhmey stiles
The huswife sets her spining bye
And bids him welcome wi her smiles
Each house is swept the day before
And windows stuck wi evergreens
The snow is...Read more of this...

Upon the Priory Grove His Usual Retirement

by Henry Vaughan
 Hail sacred shades! cool, leavy House! 
Chaste treasurer of all my vows, 
And wealth! on whose soft bosom laid 
My love's fair steps I first betrayed: 
Henceforth no melancholy flight, 
No sad wing, or hoarse bird of night, 
Disturb this air, no fatal throat 
Of raven, or owl, awake the note 
Of our laid echo, no voice dwell 
Within...Read more of this...

Girl In A Miniskirt Reading The Bible Outside My Window

by Charles Bukowski
 Sunday, I am eating a
grapefruit, church is over at the Russian 
Orthadox to the
west.

she is dark
of Eastern descent,
large brown eyes look up from the Bible
then down. a small red and black
Bible, and as she reads
her legs keep moving, moving,
she is doing a slow rythmic dance
reading the Bible. . .

long gold earrings;
2 gold bracelets on each arm,
and it's a mini-suit,...Read more of this...

The Man From Eldorado

by Robert William Service
 He's the man from Eldorado, and he's just arrived in town,
 In moccasins and oily buckskin shirt.
He's gaunt as any Indian, and pretty nigh as brown;
 He's greasy, and he smells of sweat and dirt.
He sports a crop of whiskers that would shame a healthy hog;
 Hard work has racked his joints and stooped his back;
He slops along the...Read more of this...

The Wind Is Blowin'

by Badger Clark
  My tired hawse nickers for his own home bars;
    A hoof clicks out a spark.
  The dim creek flickers to the lonesome stars;
    The trail twists down the dark.
  The ridge pines whimper to the pines below.
  The wind is blowin' and I want you so.

  The birch...Read more of this...

Our Guardian Angels and Their Children

by Vachel Lindsay
 Where a river roars in rapids
And doves in maples fret,
Where peace has decked the pastures
Our guardian angels met.

Long they had sought each other
In God's mysterious name,
Had climbed the solemn chaos tides
Alone, with hope aflame:

Amid the demon deeps had wound
By many a fearful way.
As they beheld each other
Their shout made glad the day.

No need of purse delayed them,
No hand of...Read more of this...

Little Sleeps-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight

by Galway Kinnell
1

You scream, waking from a nightmare.

When I sleepwalk
into your room, and pick you up,
and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me
hard,
as if clinging could save us. I think
you think
I will never die, I think I exude
to you the permanence of smoke or stars,
even as
my broken arms heal themselves around you.

2

I have heard you tell
the sun, don't go...Read more of this...

Letter S

by Carl Sandburg
 THE RIVER is gold under a sunset of Illinois.
It is a molten gold someone pours and changes.
A woman mixing a wedding cake of butter and eggs
Knows what the sunset is pouring on the river here.
The river twists in a letter S.
 A gold S now speaks to the Illinois sky....Read more of this...

The Bather

by Charles Simic
 Where the path to the lake twists out of sight,
A puff of dust, the kind bare feet make running,
Is what I saw in the dying light,
Night swooping down everywhere else.

A low branch heavy with leaves
Swaying momentarily where the shade
Lay thickest, some late bather
Disrobing right there for a quick dip--

(Or my solitude playing a trick on me?)
Pinned hair coming undone,...Read more of this...

Portrait of a Lady

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 Thou hast committed—
Fornication: but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead.

The Jew of Malta.


I

AMONG the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem to do—
With “I have saved this afternoon for you”;
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,
An atmosphere of Juliet’s...Read more of this...

September 1961

by Denise Levertov
 This is the year the old ones,
the old great ones
leave us alone on the road.

The road leads to the sea.
We have the words in our pockets,
obscure directions. The old ones

have taken away the light of their presence,
we see it moving away over a hill
off to one side.

They are not dying,
they are withdrawn
into a painful privacy

learning to live without words.
E....Read more of this...

The Spell Of The Yukon

by Robert William Service
 I wanted the gold, and I sought it,
 I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy -- I fought it;
 I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it --
 Came out with a fortune last fall, --
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,
 And somehow the gold isn't all.

No!...Read more of this...

The Imaginary Iceberg

by Elizabeth Bishop
 We'd rather have the iceberg than the ship, 
although it meant the end of travel. 
Although it stood stock-still like cloudy rock 
and all the sea were moving marble. 
We'd rather have the iceberg than the ship; 
we'd rather own this breathing plain of snow 
though the ship's sails were laid upon the sea 
as the snow lies undissolved...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 07: Porcelain

by Conrad Aiken
 You see that porcelain ranged there in the window—
Platters and soup-plates done with pale pink rosebuds,
And tiny violets, and wreaths of ivy?
See how the pattern clings to the gleaming edges!
They're works of art—minutely seen and felt,
Each petal done devoutly. Is it failure
To spend your blood like this?

Study them . . . you will see there, in the porcelain,
If you...Read more of this...

Ode To Silence

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Aye, but she?
Your other sister and my other soul
Grave Silence, lovelier
Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her?
Clio, not you,
Not you, Calliope,
Nor all your wanton line,
Not Beauty's perfect self shall comfort me
For Silence once departed,
For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,
Whom evermore I follow wistfully,
Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;
Thalia, not you,
Not you, Melpomene,
Not...Read more of this...

The Book of Thel

by William Blake
 THEL'S MOTTO 

1 Does the Eagle know what is in the pit? 
2 Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?
3 Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
4 Or Love in a golden bowl? 

I 

1.1 The daughters of the Seraphim led round their sunny flocks, 
1.2 All but the youngest: she in paleness sought the secret air,
1.3 To...Read more of this...

The Turning Of The Babies In The Bed

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Woman's sho' a cur'ous critter, an' dey ain't no doubtin' dat.
She's a mess o' funny capahs f'om huh slippahs to huh hat.
Ef you tries to un'erstan' huh, an' you fails, des' up an' say:
"D' ain't a bit o' use to try to un'erstan' a woman's way."
I don' mean to be complainin', but I 's jes' a-settin' down
Some o' my own...Read more of this...

Sang from the Heart Sire

by Emily Dickinson
 Sang from the Heart, Sire,
Dipped my Beak in it,
If the Tune drip too much
Have a tint too Red

Pardon the Cochineal --
Suffer the Vermillion --
Death is the Wealth
Of the Poorest Bird.

Bear with the Ballad --
Awkward -- faltering --
Death twists the strings --
'Twasn't my blame --

Pause in your Liturgies --
Wait your Chorals --
While I repeat your
Hallowed name --...Read more of this...

Clover

by Sidney Lanier
 Inscribed to the Memory of John Keats.



Dear uplands, Chester's favorable fields,
My large unjealous Loves, many yet one --
A grave good-morrow to your Graces, all,
Fair tilth and fruitful seasons!
Lo, how still!
The midmorn empties you of men, save me;
Speak to your lover, meadows! None can hear.
I lie as lies yon placid Brandywine,
Holding the hills and heavens in my heart
For contemplation.
'Tis a...Read more of this...

The Sash

by Sharon Olds
 The first ones were attached to my dress
at the waist, one on either side,
right at the point where hands could clasp you and
pick you up, as if you were a hot
squeeze bottle of tree syrup, and the
sashes that emerged like axil buds from the
angles of the waist were used to play horses, that
racing across the cement while someone
held your...Read more of this...

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 TWELVE o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,
The street-lamp sputtered,
The street-lamp muttered,
The street-lamp said, “Regard that woman
Who hesitates...Read more of this...

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