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Famous Bag Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Thomas, Dylan
...un of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on
fishmonger's slabs.
"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's hump, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was
gone."

"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths;
zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-
shant...Read more of this...



by Bukowski, Charles
...br> He got slowly to his feet and answered the
door. It was Constance. She had a fifth of unopened whiskey in a bag. 
"George, I left that son of a *****, I couldn't stand that son of a *****
anymore." 
"Sit down."
George opened the fifth, got two glasses, filled each a third with whiskey, two thirds
with water. He sat down on the bed with Constance. She took a cigarette out of her purse
and lit it. She was drunk and her hands trembled. 
"I...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...
And yawning out of that I set myself 
To face again the loud monotonous ride 
That lay before me like a vista drawn
Of bag-racks to the fabled end of things....Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...daring to breathe or Achoo. 

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal 

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du. 

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...street that clamber'd toward the mill. 

Then, on a golden autumn eventide,
The younger people making holiday,
With bag and sack and basket, great and small,
Went nutting to the hazels. Philip stay'd
(His father lying sick and needing him)
An hour behind; but as he climb'd the hill,
Just where the prone edge of the wood began
To feather toward the hollow, saw the pair,
Enoch and Annie, sitting hand-in-hand,
His large gray eyes and weather-beaten face
All-kindled by a ...Read more of this...



by Collins, Billy
...are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark myt...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...w seventy speeches by heart.
I'd extemporize back-chat, I knew how to gag,
And I knew how to let the cat out of the bag.
I knew how to act with my back and my tail;
With an hour of rehearsal, I never could fail.
I'd a voice that would soften the hardest of hearts,
Whether I took the lead, or in character parts.
I have sat by the bedside of poor Little Nell;
When the Curfew was rung, then I swung on the bell.
In the Pantomime season I never fell flat,
And I...Read more of this...

by Carver, Raymond
...he boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minut...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ky's soul like a partridge
Over Morello with squib and cracker.

XXXIII.

This time we'll shoot better game and bag 'em hot---
No mere display at the stone of Dante,
But a kind of sober Witanagemot
(Ex: ``Casa Guidi,'' _quod videas ante_)
Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence,
How Art may return that departed with her. 
Go, hated house, go each trace of the Loraine's,
And bring us the days of Orgagna hither!

XXXIV.

How we shall prologize, how we sh...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...waded out into the lake and tried to catch the

minnows with their hands. They also used milk cartons and

plastic bags. They presented the lake with hours of human

effort. Their total catch was one minnow. It jumped out of a

can full of water on their table and died under the table, gasp-

ing for watery breath while their mother fried eggs on the

Coleman stove.

 The mother apologized. She was supposed to be watching

the fish --THIS IS MY EARTHL...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...risoner had to swing.

Right in we went, with soul intent
On Death and Dread and Doom:
The hangman, with his little bag,
Went shuffling through the gloom:
And each man trembled as he crept
Into his numbered tomb.


That night the empty corridors
Were full of forms of Fear,
And up and down the iron town
Stole feet we could not hear,
And through the bars that hide the stars
White faces seemed to peer.

He lay as one who lies and dreams
In a pleasant meadow-land,
The...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...to-day.
I wonder how it happens I'm the winner
Of so much sweetness. But I think you're thinner;
You're like a bag of feathers on my knee.
Why, Lotta child, you're almost strangling me.
I'm glad you're going out this afternoon.
The days are getting short, and I'm so tied
At the Court Theatre my poor little bride
Has not much junketing I fear, but soon
I'll ask our manager to grant a boon.
To-night, perhaps, I'll get a pass for you,
And when I go, why ...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...p; But life of happier sort to me pourtrayed,  And other joys my fancy to allure;  The bag-pipe dinning on the midnight moor  In barn uplighted, and companions boon  Well met from far with revelry secure,  In depth of forest glade, when jocund June  Rolled fast along the sky his warm and genial moon.   But ill it suited me, in journey dark  O'er moor and...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...steale corn, and tolle thrice
And yet he had a thumb of gold, pardie.
A white coat and a blue hood weared he
A baggepipe well could he blow and soun',
And therewithal he brought us out of town.

A gentle MANCIPLE  was there of a temple,
Of which achatours* mighte take ensample *buyers
For to be wise in buying of vitaille*. *victuals
For whether that he paid, or took *by taile*, *on credit
Algate* he waited so in his achate**, *always **purchase
That he wa...Read more of this...

by Dryden, John
...gold, 
He cast himself into the saint-like mould; 
Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain, 
The loudest bag-pipe of the squeaking train. 
But, as 'tis hard to cheat a juggler's eyes, 
His open lewdness he could ne'er disguise. 
There split the saint; for hypocritic zeal 
Allows no sins but those it can conceal. 
Whoring to scandal gives too large a scope; 
Saints must not trade, but they may interlope. 
The ungodly principle was all the same; 
...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...d the Spleen.

The Goddess with a discontented Air
Seems to reject him, tho' she grants his Pray'r. 
A wondrous Bag with both her Hands she binds,
Like that where once Ulysses held the Winds;
There she collects the Force of Female Lungs,
Sighs, Sobs, and Passions, and the War of Tongues.
A Vial next she fills with fainting Fears,
Soft Sorrows, melting Griefs, and flowing Tears.
The Gnome rejoicing bears her Gift away,
Spreads his black Wings, and slowly mounts...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...

2

There was no solace in the parsonage, no solace there at all,

The staff found it odd, my wanting to park my heavy bag and trudge

From room to room. The couch Emily died on, so shabby and so faded,

Patrick’s hat and sticks like stage props, Mrs. Gaskell’s escritoire

So thoroughly bourgeois, Charlotte’s crinoline evoking ‘Ooh’ and ‘Aah’.



I sat outside the tourist shop, watching the families pass,

Still reeling from the news of our son’s loss,

His life-...Read more of this...

by Herbert, George
...gyptian slave.
They use that power against me, which I gave: 
Was ever grief like mine? 

Mine own Apostle, who the bag did bear, 
Though he had all I had, did not forebear
To sell me also, and to put me there: 
Was ever grief like mine? 

For thirty pence he did my death devise, 
Who at three hundred did the ointment prize, 
Not half so sweet as my sweet sacrifice: 
Was ever grief like mine? 

Therefore my soul melts, and my heart's dear treasure
Drops blood (the only be...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...de smart’ gyrate to ‘Sex Bomb, Sex Bomb’

And sing along its lyrics to the throng of which I’m one

My shorts, shoulder bag and white beard

Making me stand out in the teeming swarm

Of teens and twenties this foetid Friday night

On my way from the ward where our son paces

And fulminates I throw myself into the drowning

Tide of Friday to be rescued by sheer normality.

The mill girl with her mates asks anxiously

"Are you on your own? Come and join us

What’s your name...Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...
As if (how many conditionals must we suffer?) 
I'm driving to your side
—an intimate collusion—
packed in the trunk my bag of foils for fencing with pain
glasses of varying spectrum for sun or fog or sun-struck
 rain or bitterest night my sack of hidden
poetries, old glue shredding from their spines

my time exposure of the Leonids
 over Joshua Tree

As if we're going to win this O because

•

If you have a sister I am not she
nor your mother nor you my daughter
nor are we l...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs