Famous Long-Distance Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Long-Distance poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous long-distance poems. These examples illustrate what a famous long-distance poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...PRELUDE OF THE FOUNDER OF THE DANISH HOUSE
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,
awing the earls. Since erst he lay
friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:
for he waxed ...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...dark
Won't disappear--when doctors call like tedious
Birds, "If only..." up and down hospital halls--
When, long-distance, I hear her say, "Don't worry.
Honey, I'll be fine," is it a wonder
If my mind speeds down blind alleys?
If the adage "Love is blind" has never seemed
So true? If, in a flash of blinding light
I see Justice drop her scales, yank off
Her blindfold, stand revealed--a monster-god
With spidery arms and a mouth like a black hole--
While I leap...Read more of this...
by
Webb, Charles
...It's not so much
abstractions are available:
the lofty period of the mind
ending a sentence while the pain endures:
departures absences.
And you are still on the dock
the smoke hasn't cleared in The Narrows
At noon I sit in Jim's Place waiting for George
Who is mopping the stage up
While two girls cry in the last row.
I think they ...Read more of this...
by
O'Hara, Frank
...Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
Your great puffs of flowers
Are everywhere in this my New England.
Among your heart-shaped leaves
Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing
Their little weak soft songs;
In the crooks of your branches
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the lig...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...Your bed's got two wrong sides. You life's all grouse.
I let your phone-call take its dismal course:
Ah can't stand it no more, this empty house!
Carrots choke us wi'out your mam's white sauce!
Them sweets you brought me, you can have 'em back.
Ah'm diabetic now. Got all the facts.
(The diabetes comes hard on the track
of two coronar...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.
You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone.
He'd put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a cri...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...You say I O.K.ed
LONG DISTANCE?
O.K.ed it when?
My goodness, Central
That was then!
I'm mad and disgusted
With that ***** now.
I don't pay no REVERSED
CHARGES nohow.
You say, I will pay it--
Else you'll take out my phone?
You better let
My phone alone.
I didn't ask him
To telephone me.
Roscoe knows darn well
LONG DISTANCE...Read more of this...
by
Hughes, Langston
...A guardian of long-distance conduits in the desert?
A one-man crew of a fortress in the sand?
Whoever he was. At dawn he saw furrowed mountains
The color of ashes, above the melting darkness,
Saturated with violet, breaking into fluid rouge,
Till they stood, immense, in the orange light.
Day after day. And, before he noticed, year after year.
For whom, he ...Read more of this...
by
Milosz, Czeslaw
...ed in his ear" and "slept him the world."
I thought, OK this shirt will clothe the other in me.
As we fell into long-distance love talk
a squeaky chittering started up all around,
and every few seconds came a sudden loud
buzzing. I half expected to find
the insulation on the telephone line
laid open under the pressure of our talk
leaking low-frequency noises.
But a few yards away a dozen hummingbirds,
gorgets going drab or blazing
according as the sun struck ...Read more of this...
by
Kinnell, Galway
...I
Once in the winter
Out on a lake
In the heart of the north-land,
Far from the Fort
And far from the hunters,
A Chippewa woman
With her sick baby,
Crouched in the last hours
Of a great storm.
Frozen and hungry,
She fished through the ice
With a line of the twisted
Bark of the cedar,
And a rabbit-bone hook
Polished and barbed;
Fished with the bare hoo...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Duncan Campbell
...ne else's
credit cards and monogrammed watch,
would understand.
The drunken poet
(a genius by daylight)
who places long-distance calls
at three A.M. and then lets you sit
holding the phone while he vomits
(he calls it "The Night of the Long Knives")
getting his kicks out of the death call,
would understand.
The insomniac
listening to his heart
thumping like a June bug,
listening on his transistor
to Long John Nebel arguing from New York,
lying on his bed lik...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
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