Portrait of the Artist

Related poetry:

1. Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts, That all sin is divided into two parts. One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important, And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant, And the other kind of […]...
2. Portrait By A Neighbour Before she has her floor swept Or her dishes done, Any day you’ll find her A-sunning in the sun! It’s long after midnight Her key’s in the lock, And you never see her chimney smoke Til past ten o’clock! She digs in her garden With a shovel and a spoon, She weeds her lazy lettuce […]...
3. Artist He gave a picture exhibition, Hiring a little empty shop. Above its window: FREE ADMISSION Cajoled the passers-by to stop; Just to admire – no need to purchase, Although his price might have been low: But no proud artist ever urges Potential buyers at his show. Of course he badly needed money, But more he […]...
4. Portrait (For S. A.)TO write one book in five years Or five books in one year, To be the painter and the thing painted, … where are we, bo? Wait-get his number. The barber shop handling is here And the tweeds, the cheviot, the Scotch Mist, And the flame orange scarf. Yet there is more-he sleeps […]...
5. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
6. Portrait of a Lady 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 […]...
7. Portrait d'Une Femme Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea, London has swept about you this score years And bright ships left you this or that in fee: Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things, Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price. Great minds have sought you – lacking someone else. You have been second […]...
8. A Portrait Because my love is quick to come and go- A little here, and then a little there- What use are any words of mine to swear My heart is stubborn, and my spirit slow Of weathering the drip and drive of woe? What is my oath, when you have but to bare My little, easy […]...
9. The Artist The Artist and his Luckless Wife They lead a horrid haunted life, Surrounded by the things he’s made That are not wanted by the trade. The world is very fair to see; The Artist will not let it be; He fiddles with the works of God, And makes them look uncommon odd. The Artist is […]...
10. The Artist All day with brow of anxious thought The dictionary through, Amid a million words he sought The sole one that would do. He wandered on from pub to pub Yet never ceased to seek With burning brain and pencil stub The Word Unique. Said he: ‘I’ll nail it down or die. Oh Heaven help me, […]...
11. The Artist as an Old Man If you ask him he will talk for hours How at fourteen he hammered signs, fingers Raw with cold, and later painted bowers In ladies’ boudoirs; how he played checkers For two weeks in jail, and lived on dark bread; How he fled the border to a country Which disappeared wars ago; unfriended Crossed a […]...
12. Sonnet 38 – First time he kissed me, he but only kissed First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And ever since, it grew more clean and white, Slow to world-greetings, quick with its ‘Oh, list,’ When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst I could not wear here, plainer to my sight, Than that first kiss. […]...
13. The Spider as an Artist The Spider as an Artist Has never been employed Though his surpassing Merit Is freely certified By every Broom and Bridget Throughout a Christian Land Neglected Son of Genius I take thee by the Hand...
14. The Artist's Duty So it is the duty of the artist to discourage all traces of shame To extend all boundaries To fog them in right over the plate To kill only what is ridiculous To establish problem To ignore solutions To listen to no one To omit nothing To contradict everything To generate the free brain To […]...
15. To A Young Artist It is good for strength not to be merciful To its own weakness, good for the deep urn to run over, good to explore The peaks and the deeps, who can endure it, Good to be hurt, who can be healed afterward: but you that have whetted consciousness Too bitter an edge, too keenly daring, […]...
16. The House Of Dust: Part 04: 03: Palimpsest: A Deceitful Portrait Well, as you say, we live for small horizons: We move in crowds, we flow and talk together, Seeing so many eyes and hands and faces, So many mouths, and all with secret meanings,- Yet know so little of them; only seeing The small bright circle of our consciousness, Beyond which lies the dark. Some […]...
17. Penniwit, the Artist I lost my patronage in Spoon River From trying to put my mind in the camera To catch the soul of the person. The very best picture I ever took Was of Judge Somers, attorney at law. He sat upright and had me pause Till he got his cross-eye straight. Then when he was ready […]...
18. Artist's Life Of all the waltzes the great Strauss wrote, Mad with melody, rhythm rife From the very first to the final note, Give me his “Artist’s Life!” It stirs my blood to my finger ends, Thrills me and fills me with vague unrest, And all that is sweetest and saddest blends Together within my breast. It […]...
19. In An Artist's Studio One face looks out from all his canvasses, One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans; We found her hidden just behind those screens, That mirror gave back all her loveliness. A queenin opal or in ruby dress, A nameless girl in freshest summer greens, A saint, an angel; every canvass means The same one […]...
20. 161. Epigram Addressed to an Artist DEAR -, I’ll gie ye some advice, You’ll tak it no uncivil: You shouldna paint at angels mair, But try and paint the devil. To paint an Angel’s kittle wark, Wi’ Nick, there’s little danger: You’ll easy draw a lang-kent face, But no sae weel a stranger.-R. B....
21. Before Her Portrait In Youth As lovers, banished from their lady’s face And hopeless of her grace, Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place, Fondly adore Some stealth-won cast attire she wore, A kerchief or a glove: And at the lover’s beck Into the glove there fleets the hand, Or at impetuous command Up from the kerchief floats the virgin […]...
22. At Cheyenne Young Lochinvar came in from the West, With fringe on his trousers and fur on his vest; The width of his hat-brim could nowhere be beat, His No. Brogans were chuck full of feet, His girdle was horrent with pistols and things, And he flourished a handful of aces on kings. The fair Mariana sate […]...
23. Self-Portrait At 28 I know it’s a bad title But I’m giving it to myself as a gift On a day nearly canceled by sunlight When the entire hill is approaching The ideal of Virginia Brochured with goldenrod and loblolly And I think “at least I have not woken up With a bloody knife in my hand” By […]...
24. The Portrait The portrait there above my bed They tell me is a work of art; My Wife, since twenty years she’s dead: Her going nearly broke my heart. Alas! No little ones we had To light our hearth with joy and glee; Yet as I linger lone and sad I know she’s waiting me. The picture? […]...
25. The Portrait My mother never forgave my father For killing himself, Especially at such an awkward time And in a public park, That spring When I was waiting to be born. She locked his name In her deepest cabinet And would not let him out, Though I could hear him thumping. When I came down from the […]...
26. Portrait A child draws the outline of a body. She draws what she can, but it is white all through, She cannot fill in what she knows is there. Within the unsupported line, she knows That life is missing; she has cut One background from another. Like a child, She turns to her mother. And you […]...
27. Portrait She has no need to fear the fall Of harvest from the laddered reach Of orchards, nor the tide gone ebbing From the steep beach. Nor hold to pain’s effrontery Her body’s bulwark, stern and savage, Nor be a glass, where to forsee Another’s ravage. What she has gathered, and what lost, She will not […]...
28. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror As Parmigianino did it, the right hand Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer And swerving easily away, as though to protect What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams, Fur, pleated muslin, a coral ring run together In a movement supporting the face, which swims Toward and away like the hand Except […]...
29. Self-Portrait The steadfastness of generations of nobility Shows in the curving lines that form the eyebrows. And the blue eyes still show traces of childhood fears And of humility here and there, not of a servant’s, Yet of one who serves obediantly, and of a woman. The mouth formed as a mouth, large and accurate, Not […]...
30. Portrait Because life’s passing show Is little to his mind, There is a man I know Indrawn from human kind. His dearest friends are books; Yet oh how glad he talks To birds and trees and brooks On lonely walks. He takes the same still way By grove and hill and sea; He lives that each […]...
31. Portrait of a Boy After the whipping he crawled into bed, Accepting the harsh fact with no great weeping. How funny uncle’s hat had looked striped red! He chuckled silently. The moon came, sweeping A black, frayed rag of tattered cloud before In scorning; very pure and pale she seemed, Flooding his bed with radiance. On the floor Fat […]...
32. Fog Portrait RINGS of iron gray smoke; a woman’s steel face… looking… looking. Funnels of an ocean liner negotiating a fog night; pouring a taffy mass down the wind; layers of soot on the top deck; a taffrail… and a woman’s steel face… looking… looking. Cliffs challenge humped; sudden arcs form on a gull’s wing in the […]...
33. On A Portrait Of Wordsworth WORDSWORTH upon Helvellyn! Let the cloud Ebb audibly along the mountain-wind, Then break against the rock, and show behind The lowland valleys floating up to crowd The sense with beauty. He with forehead bowed And humble-lidded eyes, as one inclined Before the sovran thought of his own mind, And very meek with inspirations proud, Takes […]...
34. Interior Portrait You don’t survive in me Because of memories; Nor are you mine because Of a lovely longing’s strength. What does make you present Is the ardent detour That a slow tenderness Traces in my blood. I do not need To see you appear; Being born sufficed for me To lose you a little less....
35. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
36. On a Portrait of a Deaf Man The kind old face, the egg-shaped head, The tie, discreetly loud, The loosely fitting shooting clothes, A closely fitting shroud. He liked old city dining rooms, Potatoes in their skin, But now his mouth is wide to let The London clay come in. He took me on long silent walks In country lanes when young. […]...
37. You know that Portrait in the Moon You know that Portrait in the Moon So tell me who ’tis like The very Brow the stooping eyes A fog for Say Whose Sake? The very Pattern of the Cheek It varies in the Chin But Ishmael since we met ’tis long And fashions intervene When Moon’s at full ‘Tis Thou I say My […]...
38. On Leaving Some Friends At An Early Hour Give me a golden pen, and let me lean On heaped-up flowers, in regions clear, and far; Bring me a tablet whiter than a star, Or hand of hymning angel, when ’tis seen The silver strings of heavenly harp atween: And let there glide by many a pearly car Pink robes, and wavy hair, and […]...
39. A Portrait in Georgia Hair-braided chestnut, Coiled like a lyncher’s rope, Eyes-fagots, Lips-old scars, or the first red blisters, Breath-the last sweet scent of cane, And her slim body, white as the ash Of black flesh after flame....
40. Portrait of a Motor Car IT’S a lean car… a long-legged dog of a car… a gray-ghost eagle car. The feet of it eat the dirt of a road… the wings of it eat the hills. Danny the driver dreams of it when he sees women in red skirts and red sox in his sleep. It is in Danny’s life […]...