Famous Whole Thing Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Whole Thing poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous whole thing poems. These examples illustrate what a famous whole thing poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Sexton, Anne
...oat.
I hid in the kitchen under the ragbag.
I refuse to remember the dead.
And the dead are bored with the whole thing.
But you -- you go ahead,
go on, go on back down
into the graveyard,
lie down where you think their faces are;
talk back to your old bad dreams....Read more of this...
by
Edson, Russell
...with garlic, just like you like it, said
mother.
Why don't you have the butcher cut these apes up? You lay
the whole thing on the table every night; the same fractured
skull, the same singed fur; like someone who died horribly. These
aren't dinners, these are post-mortem dissections.
Try a piece of its gum, I've stuffed its mouth with bread,
said mother.
Ugh, it looks like a mouth full of vomit. How can I bite into
its cheek with bread spillin...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...y were not there for any pain he felt.
I do not think he felt the pain at all.
He felt the blow.… Oh, the whole thing was bad—
So bad that even the bleaching suns and rains
Of years that wash away to faded lines,
Or blot out wholly, the sharp wrongs and ills
Of youth, have had no cleansing agent in them
To dim the picture. I still see him going
Away from where I stood; and I shall see him
Longer, sometime, than I shall see the face
Of whosoever watches...Read more of this...
by
Doty, Mark
...s someone meant us
to take for stone. The enormous, articulate shovel
nudges the highest row of moldings
and the whole thing wavers as though we'd dreamed it,
our black classic, and it topples all at once....Read more of this...
by
Berryman, John
...would be better. I am hungry.
The sun is not hot.
It's not a good position I am in.
If I had to do the whole thing over again
I wouldn't....Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...Always the witch's motto anyway.
I'll double theirs for both of them-you watch me.
They'll find they've got the whole thing to do over,
That is, if facts is what they want to go by.
They set a lot (now don't they?) by a record
Of Arthur Amy's having once been up
For Hog Reeve in March Meeting here in Warren.
I could have told them any time this twelvemonth
The Arthur Amy I was married to
Couldn't have been the one they say was up
In Warren at March Meeting, ...Read more of this...
by
Rich, Adrienne
...In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to
But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I...Read more of this...
by
Stafford, William
...e well,
bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one
stirring, no plans. Just being there.
This is what the whole thing is about....Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...to hear her little voice, surprised that
she was still alive. I'd get on my horse and go out to her
place and the whole thing would begin again and I'd make a
few bucks and stroke the sun-warmed fur of her stuffed dog.
One spring day she had me ascend to the attic and clean
up some boxes of stuff and throw out some stuff and put some
stuff back intd its imaginary proper place.
I was up there all alone for three hours. It was my first
time up there an...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...ze memorial of a famous general
Riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver
on him.
I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be
hauled away to the scrap yard.
I put it straight to you,
After the farmer, the miner, the shop man, the factory
hand, the fireman and the teamster,
Have all been remembered with bronze memorials,
Shaping them on the job of getting all of us
Something to eat and something to wear,
When they stack a few silhouettes
Aga...Read more of this...
by
Nicolson, Adela Florence Cory
...nd
Of love and labour, toil and strife and pain.
How the sad thoughts slip back across the night:
The whole thing seems so aimless and so vain.
What use the raptures, passion and delight,
Burnt out; as though they could not wake again.
The worn-out nerves and weary brain repeat
The question: Whither all these passions tend;—
This curious thirst, so painful and so sweet,
So fierce, so very short-lived, to what end?
Even, ...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...left alone.
He knew the loss—therefore it puzzled him
That he should sit so long there as he did,
And bring the whole thing back—the love, the trust,
The pallor, the poor face, and the faint way
She last had looked at him—and yet not weep,
Or even choose to look about the room
To see how sad it was; and once or twice
He winked and pinched his eyes against the flame
And hoped there might be tears. But hope was all,
And all to him was nothing: he was lost. ...Read more of this...
by
Lawrence, D. H.
...t, wait! even so, a flush of yellow
and strangely, O chilled wan soul, a flush of rose.
A flush of rose, and the whole thing starts again.
X
The flood subsides, and the body, like a worn sea-shell
emerges strange and lovely.
And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing
on the pink flood,
and the frail soul steps out, into the house again
filling the heart with peace.
Swings the heart renewed with peace
even of oblivion.
Oh build y...Read more of this...
by
Matthew, John
...May be the whole thing was a dream,
Pinched myself awake this morn,
To check if you are there, virtually,
And felt your sudden absence online!
Be sure you will always exist,
In a special place in my heart,
Your smile in pixels is so sweet,
But, no, you are too good to be true!
Where are you? Do you exist?
Do you still inhabit Internet protocols?
And virtual chats and...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...cal and fine. Why, yes --
I cannot take my eyes from him. I don't
know why at all.
I've looked so long the whole thing swims. I feel he
ought to fall.
Foreshortened there among the clouds he's pitifully small.
What do you say? There used to be an
Emperor standing there,
With flowing robes and laurel crown. Really? Yet
I declare
Those spiral battles round the shaft don't seem just his affair.
A togaed, laurelled man's I mean. Now
this c...Read more of this...
by
Justice, Donald
...the whole urban milieu--
One can like anything diminishment has sharpened.
Our painter friend, Lang, might show the whole thing yellow
and not be much off. It's nuance that counts, not color--
As in some late James novel, saved up for the long weekend
and vivid with all the Master simply won't tell you.
How frail our generation has got, how sallow
and pinched with just surviving! We all go off the deep end
finally, gold beaten thinly out to yellow.
And why t...Read more of this...
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