Famous California Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous California poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous california poems. These examples illustrate what a famous california poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Whitman, Walt
...n in Mississippi or Alabama—dig and hoard the golden, the sweet
potato of
Georgia and the Carolinas,
Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania,
Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp, or tobacco in the Borders,
Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees, or bunches of grapes from the
vines,
Or aught that ripens in all These States, or North or South,
Under the beaming sun, and under Thee....Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...ro' the howling wilds,
Were all those num'rous tawny tribes which swarm'd
From Baffin's bay to Del Fuego south,
From California to the Oronoque.
Far from the reach of fame they liv'd unknown
In listless slumber and inglorious ease;
To them fair science never op'd her stores,
Nor sacred truth sublim'd the soul to God;
No fix'd abode their wand'ring genius knew;
No golden harvest crown'd the fertile glebe;
No city then adorn'd the rivers bank,
Nor rising turret o...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...A PROMISE to California,
Also to the great Pastoral Plains, and for Oregon:
Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to remain, to teach robust
American
love;
For I know very well that I and robust love belong among you, inland, and along the
Western
Sea;
For These States tend inland, and toward the Western Sea—and I will also....Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit-
man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees
with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images,
I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of
your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole fam-
ilies shopping at n...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the
cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas!
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New
Mexico!
Always soft-breath’d Cuba!
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes
drain’d
by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the eighty-third year of These States—the three and a half millions of
square
miles;
The eighteen thousand miles of sea...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ss for poets;)
Bards with songs as from burning coals, or the lightning’s fork’d stripes!
Ample Ohio’s bards—bards for California! inland bards—bards of the war;)
(As a wheel turns on its axle, so I find my chants turning finally on the war;)
Bards of pride! Bards tallying the ocean’s roar, and the swooping eagle’s
scream!
You, by my charm, I invoke!...Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
...my life
I write this poem to record my discovery of it,
my reconciliation.
It was in Bishop, the room was done
in California plush: we had gone into the coffee shop, were told
you could only get a steak in the bar:
I hesitated,
not wanting to be an occasion of temptation for my father
but he wanted to, so we entered
a dark room, with amber water glasses, walnut
tables, captain's chairs,
plastic doilies, papier-mâché bas-relief wall ballerinas,
German memorial plates ...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...y
above the St. George Hotel clear, clear
for New York, that is. The radio playing
"Bird Flight," Parker in his California
tragic voice fifty years ago, his faltering
"Lover Man" just before he crashed into chaos.
I would guess that outside the recording studio
in Burbank the sun was high above the jacarandas,
it was late March, the worst of yesterday's rain
had come and gone, the sky washed blue. Bird
could have seen for miles if he'd looked, but what
he saw ...Read more of this...
by
Pinsky, Robert
...efforts but a courtier?
Impossible to tell his whole delusion.
In the first months when I had moved back East
From California and had to leave a message
On Bob's machine, I used to make a habit
Of telling the tape a joke; and part-way through,
I would pretend that I forgot the punchline,
Or make believe that I was interrupted--
As though he'd be so eager to hear the end
He'd have to call me back. The joke was Elliot's,
More often than not. The doctors made the...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...ered,
Off his. The time was evening in the Pullman.
I see the porter's made your bed," I told him.
I met a Californian who would
Talk California—a state so blessed,
He said, in climate, none bad ever died there
A natural death, and Vigilance Committees
Had had to organize to stock the graveyards
And vindicate the state's humanity.
"Just the way Stefansson runs on," I murmured,
"About the British Arctic. That's what comes
Of being in the market with a clim...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...e. got an Indian friend who'd like to meet
you and yours. he swears he's got the biggest
pecker in the state of California.
and guess what?
he writes
POETRY
too!...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...I'm looking for a
new place to settle down.
"I've written to Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexi-
co, Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington for
their hunting and fishing regulations, and I'm studying them
all, " he said.
"I've got enough money to travel around for six months,
looking for a place to settle down where the hunting and fish-
ing is good. I'11 get twelve hundred dollars back in income
tax returns by not working any more this ye...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...a Dur-
bin movie, like a chorus girl who wanted to go to college, "
Trout Fishing in America said.
IN THE CALIFORNIA BUSH
I've come home from Trout Fishing in America, the highway
bent its long smooth anchor about my neck and then stopped.
Now I live in this place. It took my whole life to get here, to
get to this strange cabin above Mill Valley.
We're staying with Pard and his girlfriend. They have
rented a cabin for three months, Jun...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...upon, for all your glimmering
language
and
spirituality!
You low expiring aborigines of the hills of Utah, Oregon, California!
You dwarf’d Kamtschatkan, Greenlander, Lapp!
You Austral *****, naked, red, sooty, with protrusive lip, grovelling, seeking your food!
You Caffre, Berber, Soudanese!
You haggard, uncouth, untutor’d, Bedowee!
You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul, Cairo!
You bather bathing in the Ganges!
You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you Patagonian...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...at neighbors them,
Cutters down of wood, and haulers of it to the Penobscot or Kennebec,
Dwellers in cabins among the California mountains, or by the little lakes, or on the
Columbia,
Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande—friendly gatherings, the characters
and
fun,
Dwellers up north in Minnesota and by the Yellowstone river—dwellers on coasts and off
coasts,
Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through the ice.
The shapes arise...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ll see the various grains, and how flour is made, and then bread baked by the
bakers;
You shall see the crude ores of California and Nevada passing on and on till they become
bullion;
You shall watch how the printer sets type, and learn what a composing stick is;
You shall mark, in amazement, the Hoe press whirling its cylinders, shedding the printed
leaves
steady and fast:
The photograph, model, watch, pin, nail, shall be created before you.
In large calm halls,...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...1
A CALIFORNIA song!
A prophecy and indirection—a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air;
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads departing;
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.
Farewell, my brethren,
Farewell, O earth and sky—farewell, ye neighboring waters; ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...arting—of the growth of completer men than any yet,
Of myself, soon, perhaps, closing up my songs by these shores,
Of California, of Oregon—and of me journeying to live and sing there;
Of the Western Sea—of the spread inland between it and the spinal river,
Of the great pastoral area, athletic and feminine,
of all sloping down there where the fresh free giver, the mother, the Mississippi flows,
Of future women there—of happiness in those high plateaus, ranging three thou...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...tle
girls, they looked so
pretty and clean and
alert,
they sat still and
straight
and their hair was
beautiful
in the California
sunshine.
the the recess bells rang
and we all waited for the
fun.
then Mrs. Sorenson told us:
"now, what we are going to
do is we are going to tell
each other what we did
during the rainstorm!
we'll begin in the front row
and go right around!
now, Michael, you're first!. . ."
well, we all began to tell
our stories, Mich...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...u Texaco pipelines
blackens ocean from broken Gulf tankers
spills onto Santa Barbara beaches from
Standard of California derricks offshore.
...Read more of this...
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