We have a lot of long narrative poems written in the 20th century, but they're not very well known, and they're not read by very many people.
quote by Robert Morgan

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Of the individual poems, some are more lyric and some are more descriptive or narrative. Each poem is fixed in a moment. All those moments written or read together take on the movement and architecture of a narrative.
quote by Marilyn Hacker

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The Twentieth Century Is Almost Over
Back in 1899, when everyone was singing auld lang syne
A century took a long, long time for every boy and girl.
Now theres only one thing that Id like to know
Where did the 20th century go?
Id swear it was here just a minute ago
All over this world.
Chorus:
And now the 20th century is almost over,
Almost over, almost over
The 20th century is almost over
All over this world.
All over this world, all over this world
The 20th century is almost over, all over this world.
Does anyone remember the great depression?
I read all about it in true confession
Im sorry I was late for the recording session
But somebody put me on hold.
Has anybody seen my linoleum floors
Petroleum jelly, and two world wars?
They got stuck in the revolving doors
All over this world.
And now...
The winters getting colder, summers getting hotter
Wishin wells wishin for another drop of water.
And mother earths blushin cause somebody caught her
Makin love to the man in the moon.
Tell me how you gonna keep em down on the farm
Now that outer space has lost its charm?
Somebody set off a burglar alarm
And not a moment too soon.
Because...
Old father time has got his toes a tappin
Standing in the window, grumblin and a rappin
Everybodys waiting for something to happen.
Tell me if it happens to you!
The judgment day is getting nearer
There it is in the rear view mirror.
If you duck down I could see a little clearer
All over this world!
And now...
song performed by by John Prine

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The 20th century taught us how far unbridled evil can and will go when the world fails to confront it. It is time that we heed the lessons of the 20th century and stand up to these murderers. It is time that we end genocide in the 21st century.
quote by Allyson Schwartz

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I mean, certainly it's the single biggest event, I think, in terms of popular entertainment, or art even, if you say that, of the 20th Century. It's been film. It's the 20th Century's real art form.
quote by Sydney Pollack

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I Have Not Been To Oxford Town
Baby grace is the victim
She was 14 years of age
And the wheels are turning, turning
For the finger points at me
Alls well
But I have not been to oxford town
Alls well
But I have not been to oxford town
Toll the bell
Pay the private eye
Alls well
20th century dies
And the prison priests are decent
My attorney seems sincere
I fear my days are numbered
Lord get me out of here
Alls well
But I have not been to oxford town
Alls well
But I have not been to oxford town
Toll the bell
Pay the private eye
Alls well
20th century dies
This is your shadow on my wall
This is my flesh and blood
This is what I couldve been
And the wheels are turning and turning
As the 20th century dies
If I had not ripped the fabric
If time had not stood still
If I had not met ramona
If Id only paid my bill
Alls well
But I have not been to oxford town
Alls well
But I have not been to oxford town
Toll the bell
Pay the private eye
Alls well
20th century dies
And the wheels are turning and turning
As the 20th century dies
This is my bunk with two sheets
This is my food though foul
This is what I could have been
Toll the bell
Pay the private eye
Alls well
20th century dies
song performed by by David Bowie

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The 20th Century was the century of Aviation and the century of Globalization. The next century will be the century of Space.
quote by Wilson Greatbatch

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It's always amusing to look at how something early in the 20th century was written in anthropology and how it's written now. There's been an enormous shift in how it's done, but yet you can't put your finger on someone who actually did it.
quote by Clifford Geertz

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Gratis Et Amore
for the poems that i have written
and which you read
by heart, i bless you with a prayer for luck
for another year
for the poems which i have not written yet,
i wish you a longer life, so you may read them
when they become finally written
for the poems i have in mind and which i will not write
i wish you patience i wish you some prayers
may these poems realize their worth
may they decide to become truths
with you i pray that God may be also kind
for those still unspoken
and may God bless your mind
may they open up like tight buds to become the flowers
of the world, the sun to warm them, the rain to shower them
may these poems live and linger
may they be like grass always unswerving to grow and cover everything
alive and loving.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa

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Young people and Indian people need to know that we existed in the 20th Century. We need to know who our heroes are and to know what we have done and accomplished in this century other than what Olympic athletes Jim Thorpe and Billy Mills have done.
quote by Russell Means

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I Have Read Many Poems I Know I Never Could Have Written
I have read many poems I know I never could have written
Poems whose language was far richer and more remarkable than mine
Poems that saw as I cannot see and sounded as I cannot sound
Poems of magnificent music and many hidden meanings
I have read many poems greater than those I could ever write
And have been humbled and saddened and inspired by them
Out there somewhere else
There have been real poets
And I in my own little lines
Love and respect them.
poem by Shalom Freedman

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One layer was certainly 17th century. The 18th century in him is obvious. There was the 19th century, and a large slice, of course, of the 20th century; and another, curious layer which may possibly have been the 21st.
quote by Clement Attlee

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Writings to read stand
Poems are written to read or sing
Plays are written to read or act.
Anything written to read leaves
The readers free with their imagination.
07.11.2007.
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar

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Eisenhower is my choice as the American of the 20th Century. Of all the men I've studied and written about, he is the brightest and the best.
quote by Stephen Ambrose

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We current justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as 20th-century Americans.
quote by William J. Brennan, Jr.

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Anybody in the next centuries wanting to know what it was like to be a poet in the middle of the 20th century should read Kaddish.
quote by Leslie Fiedler

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The heart of the security agenda is protecting lives - and we now know that the number of people who will die of AIDS in the first decade of the 21st Century will rival the number that died in all the wars in all the decades of the 20th century.
0317 Fingertip to fingertip, a human net
i think it's really wonderful
that with all the million poems on this net
people find their way to read what each of us has read
or written.
it's like a shining human net around the world -
fingertip to fingertip in space
all connected by the love of poetry
and the poetry of love.
so instead of moping and chewing our pencils,
feeling pathetic and unread
we can dedicate all our poems to all those real people who - yes! -
actually read them
and say
It's you I wrote them for - and you - and you-
and now I know you're there
I'll write some better ones for you in time,
that what it's all about...
and if I'm silent for a time
working on something that's good enough for you,
remember -
love, love, love
poem by Michael Shepherd

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The History Poems Have Not Been Written
The history poems have not been written
The poems after Milosz
The Wallace Stevens poems will never be written
I can’t come close
I have tried the Blake poems
But of course I am not near them either
I would like to the ironic intellectual poems
I might be able to do them
I could do a kind of surrealistic association mind poem a prose poem
But I don’t like that very much
The poems of Jerusalem have not been good enough
Poems of propaganda are awkward and unacceptable
The small poems that tell of my life
They are for me the chance at real poetry
And I will continue as best I can with them
The American poems I have not yet found the idiom for
I can be epigrammatic in Emerson Thoreau fashion
But not with the hard New England observing eye
Borges poems I love
And the stories of mind and literature
Making the drama of a life of a storyteller
Interest me
But I doubt I could truly do them well
Imitation can only take one so far
And through it one may lose one’s way entirely
I can really do only what I am
Not the Dickinson poems nor the Hopkins poems nor the Wordsworth poems nor the Keats poems nor the Amichai poems nor the poems of many others whose poetry I love
The Biblical poems have been tried
The poems of cosmic and scientific reflection
I could try to improve them
There are too many different kinds of poems to write
And I cannot write almost all of them
This is another poem about poems and poetry
I have written many for a long time now
Perhaps I need to go elsewhere and write in a new way
A way I have not dreamed or even remotely understood possible before.
The poems of the unknown poetry await me
I will go on but I am not sure now I know in which wa
poem by Shalom Freedman

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Poems About.
There are poems that you will never see
Marked in a folder titled 'privacy'
Poems of hate and anger and personal pain
Poems about greed and hunger and personal gain
Poems about people I would love to see dead
Poems about women I met
Poems about relationships that have gone bad
Poems about issues with mom and dad
Poems about me, the person no one knows
Poems about places where only my soul goes
Poems I wish I could place in the clouds for all to read
Poems about lust, selfishness and greed
Poems I know will hurt those I hate
Poems I write by complete mistake
Poems I have hidden in my heart and my head
Poems about things that are better left unsaid
Poems I want to share and poems I want to retract
Poems of shame and how others might act
They stay in my psyche, they are a part of me
These poems I write, but you will never see.
poem by Mahfooz Ali

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I think Picasso was, without doubt, the greatest portraitist of the 20th century, if not any other century.
quote by David Hockney

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