Famous Unwanted Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Adoption

by Robert William Service
 Because I was a woman lone
 And had of friends so few,
I made two little ones my own,
 Whose parents no one knew;
Unwanted foundlings of the night,
 Left at the convent door,
Whose tiny hands in piteous plight
 Seemed to implore.

By Deed to them I gave my name,
 And never will they know
That from the evil slums they came,
 Two...Read more of this...

End Middle Beginning

by Anne Sexton
 There was an unwanted child.
Aborted by three modern methods
she hung on to the womb,
hooked onto I
building her house into it
and it was to no avail,
to black her out.

At her birth
she did not cry,
spanked indeed,
but did not yell--
instead snow fell out of her mouth.

As she grew, year by year,
her hair turned like a rose in a vase,
and bled down her...Read more of this...

I Love You

by Ehsan Sehgal
I always dreamed
It seemed
An invisible angelic soul
That came as spiritual lights
In my sad, tearful and darknights
Where I was prisoner
By an unwanted lover
Living in the fears
I prayed years and years
With my heart and tears
May God had listened me
And one day I discovered you
My heart deeply favoured you
I now see and feel
You, as my love and soul
My life and final goal
May you...Read more of this...

The Break Away

by Anne Sexton
 Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce:
the courtroom a cement box,
a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me
and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land
for the Jew in me,
but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us—
and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors
that makes the now separate parts useless,
even to cut each other up...Read more of this...

The Orient Express

by Randall Jarrell
 One looks from the train
Almost as one looked as a child. In the sunlight
What I see still seems to me plain,
I am safe; but at evening
As the lands darken, a questioning
Precariousness comes over everything.
Once after a day of rain
I lay longing to be cold; after a while
I was cold again, and hunched shivering
Under the quilt's many colors, gray
With the...Read more of this...

My Library

by Robert William Service
 Like prim Professor of a College
I primed my shelves with books of knowledge;
And now I stand before them dumb,
Just like a child that sucks its thumb,
And stares forlorn and turns away,
With dolls or painted bricks to play.

They glour at me, my tomes of learning.
"You dolt!" they jibe; "you undiscerning
Moronic oaf, you make a fuss,
With highbrow swank selecting us;
Saying: "I'll...Read more of this...

The Christmas Tree

by Robert William Service
 In the dark and damp of the alley cold,
Lay the Christmas tree that hadn't been sold;
By a shopman dourly thrown outside;
With the ruck and rubble of Christmas-tide;
Trodden deep in the muck and mire,
Unworthy even to feed a fire...
So I stopped and salvaged that tarnished tree,
And thus is the story it told to me:

"My Mother was Queen of the forest...Read more of this...

Roosters

by Elizabeth Bishop
 At four o'clock
in the gun-metal blue dark
we hear the first crow of the first cock

just below
the gun-metal blue window
and immediately there is an echo

off in the distance,
then one from the backyard fence,
then one, with horrible insistence,

grates like a wet match 
from the broccoli patch,
flares,and all over town begins to catch.

Cries galore
come from the water-closet door,
from the dropping-plastered henhouse floor,

where...Read more of this...

Life Cycles

by Nikki Giovanni
Life Cyclesshe realized  she wasn't one  of life's winners  when she wasn't sure  life to her was some dark  dirty secret that  like some unwanted child  too late for an abortion  was to be borne  alone    she had so many private habits  she would masturbate sometimes  she...Read more of this...

For the Record

by Adrienne Rich
 The clouds and the stars didn't wage this war
the brooks gave no information
if the mountain spewed stones of fire into the river
it was not taking sides
the raindrop faintly swaying under the leaf
had no political opinions

and if here or there a house
filled with backed-up raw sewage
or poisoned those who lived there
with slow fumes, over years
the houses were not at war
nor...Read more of this...

Unwanted

by Edward Field
 The poster with my picture on it
Is hanging on the bulletin board in the Post Office.

I stand by it hoping to be recognized
Posing first full face and then profile

But everybody passes by and I have to admit
The photograph was taken some years ago.

I was unwanted then and I'm unwanted now
Ah guess ah'll go up echo mountain and crah.

I wish...Read more of this...

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