Famous Anyway Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Anyway poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous anyway poems. These examples illustrate what a famous anyway poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Giving Myself Up

by Mark Strand
 I give up my eyes which are glass eggs.
I give up my tongue.
I give up my mouth which is the contstant dream of my tongue.
I give up my throat which is the sleeve of my voice.
I give up my heart which is a burning apple.
I give up my lungs which are trees that have never seen the moon.
I give...Read more of this...

The Swan At Edgewater Park

by Ruth L Schwartz
 Isn't one of your prissy richpeoples' swans
Wouldn't be at home on some pristine pond
Chooses the whole stinking shoreline, candy wrappers, condoms
 in its tidal fringe
Prefers to curve its muscular, slightly grubby neck
 into the body of a Great Lake,
Swilling whatever it is swans swill,
Chardonnay of algae with bouquet of crud,
While Clevelanders walk by saying Look
 at that big duck!
Beauty...Read more of this...

Old Tom

by Robert William Service
 The harridan who holds the inn
 At which I toss a pot,
Is old and uglier than sin,--
 I'm glad she knows me not.
Indeed, for me it's hard to think,
 Although my pow's like snow,
She was the lass so fresh and pink
 I courted long ago.

I wronged her, yet it's sadly true
 She wanted to be wronged:
They mostly do, although...Read more of this...

The Return of Frankenstein

by Edward Field
 He didn't die in the whirlpool by the mill
where he had fallen in after a wild chase
by all the people of the town.

Somehow he clung to an overhanging rock
until the villagers went away.

And when he came out, he was changed forever,
that soft heart of his had hardened
and he really was a monster now.

He was out to pay them back,
to...Read more of this...

A Fountain a Bottle a Donkeys Ears and Some Books

by Robert Frost
 Old Davis owned a solid mica mountain
In Dalton that would someday make his fortune.
There'd been some Boston people out to see it:
And experts said that deep down in the mountain
The mica sheets were big as plate-glass windows.
He'd like to take me there and show it to me.

"I'll tell you what you show me. You remember
You said you knew the...Read more of this...

Reaping

by Amy Lowell
 You want to know what's the matter with me, do yer?
My! ain't men blinder'n moles?
It ain't nothin' new, be sure o' that.
Why, ef you'd had eyes you'd ha' seed
Me changin' under your very nose,
Each day a little diff'rent.
But you never see nothin', you don't.
Don't touch me, Jake,
Don't you dars't to touch me,
I ain't in no humour.
That's what's come over...Read more of this...

A Tree Song

by Rudyard Kipling
 (A. D. 1200)
Of all the trees that grow so fair,
 Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
 Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.
Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs,
 (All of a Midsummer morn!)
Surely we sing no little thing,
 In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!


Oak of the Clay lived many a day,
 Or ever AEneas began.
Ash...Read more of this...

The Definition of Gardening

by Edward Taylor
 Jim just loves to garden, yes he does. 
He likes nothing better than to put on 
his little overalls and his straw hat. 
He says, "Let's go get those tools, Jim." 
But then doubt begins to set in.
He says, "What is a garden, anyway?"
And thoughts about a "modernistic" garden
begin to trouble him, eat away at his resolve. 
He stands...Read more of this...

Writing To Onegin

by Ruth Padel
 (After Pushkin) 
Look at the bare wood hand-waxed floor and long 
White dressing-gown, the good child's writing-desk 
And passionate cold feet
Summoning music of the night - tumbrils, gongs
And gamelans - with one neat pen, one candle
Puttering its life out hour by hour. 
Is "Tell Him I love him" never a good idea? You can't wish this
Unlived - this world...Read more of this...

A Little History

by David Lehman
 Some people find out they are Jews.
They can't believe it.
Thy had always hated Jews.
As children they had roamed in gangs on winter nights in the old
 neighborhood, looking for Jews.
They were not Jewish, they were Irish.
They brandished broken bottles, tough guys with blood on their
 lips, looking for Jews.
They intercepted Jewish boys walking alone and beat them up.
Sometimes they...Read more of this...

The Battle Of The Bulge

by Robert William Service
 This year an ocean trip I took, and as I am a Scot
And like to get my money's worth I never missed a meal.
In spite of Neptune's nastiness I ate an awful lot,
Yet felt as fit as if we sailed upon an even keel.
But now that I am home again I'm stricken with disgust;
How many pounds of fat I've...Read more of this...

Coffee

by Richard Brautigan
 Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee
affords. I once read something about coffee. The thing said that coffee is good for you;
it stimulates all the organs.
I thought at first this was a strange way to put it, and not altogether pleasant, but
as time goes by I have found out that it...Read more of this...

Summer With Margaret

by Barry Tebb
 When my mam had to go

Up north to look after gran,

Margaret’s mam said I could

Stop with them; while they were

Sorting it out Margaret looked

Away, pretending to go all shy

But there was a gleam in her eye,

Anyway it was the six weeks’

Holiday and six weeks with

Margaret night and day was a

Sun and blue sky heaven to my

Ten-year old heart.. the...Read more of this...

Prelude

by Robert William Service
 Because the rhymes I make for raiment
Fail to avail its meed of payment,
I fain must make my well-worn tweeds
Suffice me for tomorrow's needs--
Until my verse the public reads.

I used to go to Savile Row,
But now their prices are so high,
With royalties at all time low,
Because my books few want to buy . . .
No, I don't blame them, but...Read more of this...

Margaret Fuller Slack

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I would have been as great as George Eliot
But for an untoward fate.
For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit,
Chin resting on hand, and deep-set eyes --
Gray, too, and far-searching.
But there was the old, old problem:
Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity?
Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me,
Luring me with the promise of leisure for my...Read more of this...

America

by Allen Ginsberg
 America I've given you all and now I'm nothing. 
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 
 17, 1956. 
I can't stand my own mind. 
America when will we end the human war? 
Go **** yourself with your atom bomb. 
I don't feel good don't bother me. 
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind. 
America...Read more of this...

Fellow Citizens

by Carl Sandburg
 I DRANK musty ale at the Illinois Athletic Club with
the millionaire manufacturer of Green River butter
one night
And his face had the shining light of an old-time Quaker,
he spoke of a beautiful daughter, and I knew he had
a peace and a happiness up his sleeve somewhere.
Then I heard Jim Kirch make a speech to the Advertising
Association on the trade resources...Read more of this...

The Guardian Angel Of The Little Utopia

by Jorie Graham
 Shall I move the flowers again?
Shall I put them further to the left
into the light?
Win that fix it, will that arrange the
thing?
Yellow sky.
Faint cricket in the dried-out bush.
As I approach, my footfall in the leaves
drowns out the cricket-chirping I was
coming close to hear 
Yellow sky with black leaves rearranging it.
Wind rearranging the black leaves in it.
But anyway I am...Read more of this...

Turns And Movies: Zudora

by Conrad Aiken
 Here on the pale beach, in the darkness; 
With the full moon just to rise; 
They sit alone, and look over the sea, 
Or into each other's eyes. . .

She pokes her parasol into the sleepy sand, 
Or sifts the lazy whiteness through her hand.

'A lovely night,' he says, 'the moon, 
Comes up for you and me. 
Just like...Read more of this...

Knowlt Hoheimer

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.
When I felt the bullet enter my heart
I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail
For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,
Instead of running away and joining the army,
Rather a thousand times the county jail
Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,
And this granite pedestal
Bearing the...Read more of this...

Coming Close

by Philip Levine
 Take this quiet woman, she has been
standing before a polishing wheel
for over three hours, and she lacks
twenty minutes before she can take
a lunch break. Is she a woman?
Consider the arms as they press
the long brass tube against the buffer,
they are striated along the triceps,
the three heads of which clearly show.
Consider the fine dusting of dark down
above the upper lip,...Read more of this...

Russian-american Romance

by Andrei Voznesensky
  In my land and yours they do hit the hay 
 and sleep the whole night in a similar way. 

 There's the golden Moon with a double shine. 
 It lightens your land and it lightens mine. 

 At the same low price, that is for free, 
 there's the sunrise for you and the sunset for...Read more of this...

Songs For A Colored Singer

by Elizabeth Bishop
 I

A washing hangs upon the line, 
 but it's not mine. 
None of the things that I can see 
 belong to me. 
The neighbors got a radio with an aerial; 
 we got a little portable. 
They got a lot of closet space; 
 we got a suitcase. 

I say, "Le Roy, just how much are we owing?
Something...Read more of this...

Julot The Apache

by Robert William Service
 You've heard of Julot the apache, and Gigolette, his mome. . . .
Montmartre was their hunting-ground, but Belville was their home.
A little chap just like a boy, with smudgy black mustache, --
Yet there was nothing juvenile in Julot the apache.
From head to heel as tough as steel, as nimble as a cat,
With every trick of twist and kick, a...Read more of this...

A Servant to Servants

by Robert Frost
 I didn't make you know how glad I was 
To have you come and camp here on our land. 
I promised myself to get down some day 
And see the way you lived, but I don't know! 
With a houseful of hungry men to feed 
I guess you'd find.... It seems to me 
I can't express my feelings any...Read more of this...

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