20 Poetry Examples

Poetry

The poetry is one of the main literary genres and perhaps the freest in terms of aesthetic qualities. Poetic texts are called "poems", which can be written in verse (in general) or in prose.

The cultists of this genre are called poets and a particular sensitivity is usually attributed to them. However, it is not true that poetry deals only with feelings, emotions, love or joy or sadness: any subject is worthy of the poet's attentions.

Characteristics of poetry

Many poems are written on the basis of very specific rules of meter and rhythm. In the most classical conception of poetry, rhymes (which can be consonants or assonance) between the final words of each verse. And those verses, in turn, usually compose stanzas (equivalent to the paragraph of the ordinary text).

However, free verse without rhyme is currently considered the absolute measure of poetry, allowing each person to express themselves from the formal, thematic and sound considerations that prefer. As for the regulations, poetry uses resources that can alter grammar and syntax by taking certain “poetic licenses”.

Poetry is broadly distinguished from its sister genres (la narrative, rehearsal and theater) due to some peculiarities: poetry does not tell a story (like narrative), it does not run on a topic (like the essay), nor does it reproduce a situation that happens (like the dramaturgy).

It is, in that sense, a kind of subjective description, which you can use metaphors and others literary resources with the aim of embellishing the language and transmitting the sentimental intention of the author.

Examples of poetry

1. "The six strings" by Federico García Lorca

Guitar
makes dreams cry.
The sob of souls
losses
escapes through his mouth
round.
And like the tarantula,
weaves a big star
to hunt sighs,
that float in your black
wooden cistern.

1. "Bottle to the sea" by Mario Benedetti

I put these six verses in my bottle to the sea
with the secret design that one day
I came to an almost deserted beach
and a child finds it and uncovers it
and instead of verses extract pebbles
and aid and alerts and snails.

1. "The fatal" by Rubén Darío

Blessed is the tree, which is hardly sensitive,
and more the hard stone because that no longer feels,
because there is no greater pain than the pain of being alive,
nor greater sorrow than conscious life.

To be and not know anything, and to be aimlessly
and the fear of having been and a future terror ...
And the sure terror of being dead tomorrow,
and suffer for life and for the shadow and for

what we do not know and hardly suspect,
and the flesh that tempts with its fresh bunches,
and the grave that awaits with its funeral bouquets,

And not knowing where we are going,
or where we come from! ...

1. "Aspect" by Alfonsina Storni

I live within four mathematical walls
aligned to the meter. They surround me apathetic
souls that don't even taste an iota
of this bluish fever that nourishes my chimera.

I wear a fake fur that I light gray.
Raven that under the wing keeps a fleur de lis.
My fierce and grim beak makes me laugh
that I believe myself to be a sham and a hindrance.

1. "The moon" by Jorge Luis Borges

There is so much loneliness in that gold.
The moon of the nights is not the moon
that the first Adam saw. The long centuries
they have filled it with human wakefulness
of old crying. Look at her. It is your mirror.

1. Charles Bukowski's "Shoes"

when you are young
a pair
of shoes
female
high heels
immobile
lonely
in the closet
they can turn on
your bones;
when you are old
they are just
a pair of shoes
without
no one
in them
Y
also.

1. "To the night star" by William Blake

You, blond angel of the night,
Now, as the sun rests on the mountains, it lights
your bright love tea! Put on the radiant crown
and smile at our night bed!
Smile at our loves and, while you run the
blue draperies of the sky, sow your silver dew
over all the flowers that close their sweet eyes
to the opportune dream. May your western wind sleep in
the lake. Say silence with the glare of your eyes
and wash the dust with silver. Presto, presto,
you quit; and then the wolf barks angrily everywhere
and the lion casts fire through his eyes in the dark forest.
The wool of our sheepfolds is covered with
your sacred dew; protect them with your favor.

1. "The Last Innocence" by Alejandra Pizarnik

Depart
in body and soul
depart.

Depart
get rid of stares
oppressive stones
that sleep in the throat.

I have to leave
no more inertia under the sun
no more stunned blood
no more queue to die.

I have to leave

But lash out, traveler!

1. "The game we walk in" by Juan Gelman

If I was given a choice, I would choose
this health of knowing that we are very sick,
she is happy to be so unhappy.
If I was given a choice, I would choose
this innocence of not being an innocent,
this purity in which I walk for impure.
If I was given a choice, I would choose
this love with which I hate,
this hope that eats desperate bread.
Here it happens, gentlemen,
that I stake death.

1. "Mirar" by Rafael Cadenas

I see another route, the route of the moment, the route of attention, awake, incisive, Sagittarius! Viscera Peak, Extreme Diamond, Falcon, Lightning Path, Thousand Eye Path, Magnificence Path, Sun Line Path, Reflection of the ray vigilance, of the ray now, of the ray this, royal route with its legion of living fruits whose top is that place everywhere and none.

1. "In front of the sea" by Octavio Paz

1

The wave has no shape?
In an instant it sculpts
and in another it falls apart
in which it emerges, round.
Its movement is its form.

2
The waves recede
Haunches, backs, napes?
but the waves return
Breasts, mouths, foams?

3
The sea dies of thirst.
It squirms, with no one,
on its bedrock.
He dies of thirst for air.

1. "La poesía" by Eugenio Montejo

Poetry crosses the earth alone,
support his voice in the pain of the world
and nothing asks
not even words.

He arrives from afar and without time, he never warns;
He has the key to the door.
Entering always stop to watch us.
Then he opens his hand and gives us
a flower or a pebble, something secret,
but so intense that the heart beats
too fast. And we woke up.

1. "Sometimes it seems to me ..." by Roberto Juarroz

Sometimes it seems to me
that we are in the center
from the party
However
in the center of the party
no one
In the center of the party
there is emptiness
But in the center of the void
there is another party.

1. "Silencio" by Pablo Neruda

I who grew up inside a tree
I would have a lot to say
but I learned so much silence
that I have a lot to shut up
and that is known growing
with no other joy than to grow,
with no more passion than the substance,
with no other action than innocence,
and inside the golden time
until the height calls it
to turn it orange.

1. "Letters to a stranger" by Nicanor Parra

When the years go by, when they go by
the years and the air have dug a pit
between your soul and mine; when the years go by
And I'm just a man who loved
a being that stopped for a moment in front of your lips,
a poor man tired of walking in the gardens,
Where will you be Where
you will be, oh daughter of my kisses!

1. "After the war" by Jotamario Arbeláez

one day
after the war
if there is war
if after the war there is a day
I will take you in my arms
one day after the war
if there is war
if after the war there is a day
if after the war I have arms
and I will make love to you with love
one day after the war
if there is war
if after the war there is a day
if after the war there is love
and if there is something to make love with

1. "Naked body" by José Lezama Lima

Naked body in the boat.
Fish sleeps next to the naked
that fled from the body pours
a new silver dot.

Between the grove and the point
Static boat exhales.
The breeze trembles on my neck
and the bird evaporated.

The magnet between the leaves
weaves a double crown.
Just a fallen branch

unharmed the boat chooses
the tree that remembers
dream of a serpent in the shade.

1. "The island in weight" (fragment) by Virgilio Piñera

The damn circumstance of water everywhere
He forces me to sit at the coffee table.
If I didn't think that the water surrounds me like a cancer
I could have slept soundly.
As the boys shed their clothes to swim
twelve people died in a room from compression.
When the beggar slips in the water at dawn
at the precise moment when he washes one of her nipples,
I get used to the stench of the port,
I get used to the same woman who invariably masturbates,
night after night, the soldier on guard in the middle of the dream of the fish.
A cup of coffee can't take away my fixed idea
I used to live Adamically.
What brought about the metamorphosis?

1. "Sitting on the dead" (Fragment) by Miguel Hernández

Sitting on the dead
that have been silent in two months,
kiss empty shoes
and furiously wield
the hand of the heart
and the soul that maintains it.

May my voice go up to the mountains
and come down to earth and thunder,
that's what my throat asks
from now and forever.

1. "You undress the same ..." by Jaime Sabinas

You undress the same as if you were alone
and suddenly you discover that you are with me.
How I love you then
between the sheets and the cold!

You start flirting with me like a stranger
and I make you the ceremonial and lukewarm court.
I think i'm your husband
and that you cheat on me.

And how we love each other then in laughter
to find ourselves alone in the forbidden love!
(Later, when it happened, I'm afraid of you
and I feel a chill.)

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