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Famous Wasting Away Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Bishop, Elizabeth
...hey make, 
or, like this, only attempt, since it does not matter, 
the unassertive colors of soap, or postage stamps-- 
wasting away like the former, slipping the way the latter

do when we mail the letters we wrote on the boat, 
either because the glue here is very inferior 
or because of the heat. We leave Santos at once; 
we are driving to the interior....Read more of this...



by Sexton, Anne
...ters the fort,
I won't spit or gag on his finger.
I will eat it like a white flower.
Is this the old trick, the wasting away,
the skull that waits for its dose
of electric power?

This is madness
but a kind of hunger.
What good are my questions
in this hierarchy of death
where the earth and the stones go
Dinn! Dinn! Dinn!
It is hardly a feast.
It is my stomach that makes me suffer.

Turn, my hungers!
For once make a deliberate decision.
There are brain...Read more of this...

by Pastan, Linda
...ate afternoon
Of the family.

There is still enough light
to see all the way back,
but at the windows
that light is wasting away.

Soon we will be nothing
but silhouettes: the sons'
as harsh
as the fathers'.

Soon the daughters
will take off their aprons
as trees take off their leaves
for winter.

Let us eat quickly--
let us fill ourselves up.
the covers of the album are closing
behind us....Read more of this...

by Masters, Edgar Lee
...game of life.
So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria:
"I am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River,
Gradually wasting away.
But come and take me, I killed the son
Of the merchant prince, in Madam Lou's,
And the papers that said he killed himself
In his home while cleaning a hunting gun --
Lied like the devil to hush up scandal,
For the bribe of advertising.
In my room I shot him, at Madam Lou's,
Because he knocked me down when I said
That, in spite of all th...Read more of this...

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