Famous poems are timeless pieces of literature that capture powerful human emotions, ideas, and experiences in just a few lines or verses. Poems like William Shakespeare’s sonnets, Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” Emily Dickinson’s lyric poems, and Pablo Neruda’s love poetry continue to resonate because they speak to universal themes—love, loss, nature, identity, freedom, and hope.
What makes famous poems truly special is their ability to cross cultures and generations. A single poem can inspire readers, challenge society, or offer comfort during difficult times.
- Through rhythm, imagery, and metaphor, famous poems turn ordinary words into unforgettable expressions, reminding us that poetry has the power to shape thoughts, preserve history, and touch the deepest corners of the human heart.
Useless! Useless!
By Jack Kerouac
Useless! Useless!
—heavy rain driving
into the sea
Legacy
By Amiri Baraka
In the south, sleeping against
the drugstore, growling under
the trucks and stoves, stumbling
through and over the cluttered eyes
of early mysterious night. Frowning
drunk waving moving a hand or lash.
Dancing kneeling reaching out, letting
a hand rest in shadows. Squatting
to drink or pee. Stretching to climb
pulling themselves onto horses near
where there was sea (the old songs
lead you to believe). Riding out
from this town, to another, where
it is also black. Down a road
where people are asleep. Towards
the moon or the shadows of houses.
Towards the songs’ pretended sea.
The Window
By Diane di Prima
you are my bread
and the hairline
noise
of my bones
you are almost
the sea
you are not stone
or molten sound
I think
you have no hands
this kind of bird flies backward
and this love
breaks on a windowpane
where no light talks
this is not time
for crossing tongues
(the sand here
never shifts)
I think
tomorrow
turned you with his toe
and you will
shine
and shine
unspent and underground
Riprap
By Gary Snyder
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles—
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
Writ on the Steps of Puerto Rican Harlem
By Gregory Corso
There’s a truth limits man
A truth prevents his going any farther
The world is changing
The world knows it’s changing
Heavy is the sorrow of the day
The old have the look of doom
The young mistake their fate in that look
That is truth
But it isn’t all truth
Life has meaning
And I do not know the meaning
Even when I felt it were meaningless
I hoped and prayed and sought a meaning
It wasn’t all frolic poesy
There were dues to pay
Summoning Death and God
I’d a wild dare to tackle Them
Death proved meaningless without Life
Yes the world is changing
But Death remains the same
It takes man away from Life
The only meaning he knows
And usually it is a sad business
This Death
I’d an innocence I’d a seriousness
I’d a humor save me from amateur philosophy
I am able to contradict my beliefs
I am able able
Because I want to know the meaning of everything
Yet sit I like a brokenness
Moaning: Oh what responsibility
I put on thee Gregory
Death and God
Hard hard it’s hard
I learned life were no dream
I learned truth deceived
Man is not God
Life is a century
Death an instant
