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Famous Camera Poems by Famous Poets

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

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...hed by the shore
Or near the bank of a woodland lake
Twenty-eight girls and all of them comely
Worthy of Mack Sennett's camera and Florenz Ziegfield's
Foolish Follies.

They splashed and swam with the wondrous unconsciousness
Of their youth and beauty
In the full spontaneity and summer of the fieshes of
 awareness
Heightened, intensified and softened
By the soft and the silk of the waters
Blooded made ready by the energy set afire by the
 nakedness of the body,

Electrifi...Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore



...terwards
two of the poets signed theirs happily and the third
did so willingly and Joe took photos and I smiled
for the camera, shaking hands with people
I knew or didn't know and thinking how
blessed was the state of naivete
my naive belief in the glory of the word...Read more of this...
by Lehman, David
...When at five-thirty
In the rubbed-eye haziness
Of ferreting lonesome night walks
The camera-eye refugee
Asleep in the half awakefulness
Of the hour
Peers out of his high turbanned sockets:
Hyde Park's through road links
London's diurnally estranged couple -
The Arch and Gate.

When at five-thirty
The foot falls gently
Of the vision cut in dark recesses
And the man, finger gingerly on the fly
Gapes dolefully about
For a while...Read more of this...
by Wignesan, T
...l in place

But nothing else

Except the vast

Brick wall dividing

The road in two.





10



A novelty then

The camera drew

Crowds from the Bridgefields

A boy in an Eton collar

His bowler-hatted father

Girls with braided curls

Dresses to their ankles

A delivery boy

With a brimming basket

A man with a beer pail

In either hand.





11



The long exposure

Caught every movement

In a single frame

The pensioner shuffling

With his stick

The girl tying

A ...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...
40



There is a mermaid singing

On East Street on an IBM poster

Her hair is lack-lustre

Her breasts are facing the camera

Her tail is like a worn-out brush.



Chimney stacks

Blind black walls

Of factories

Grimy glass

Flickering firelight

 In black-leaded grates.





41



Hunslet de Ledes

Hop-scotch, hide and seek,

Bogies-on-wheels

Not one tree in Hunslet

Except in the cemetery

The lake filled in

For fifty years,

The bluebell has rung

Its last per...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry



...ence strips bare:
In Dreyer's Passion of Joan 

Falconetti's face, hair shorn, a great geography
mutely surveyed by the camera 

If there were a poetry where this could happen
not as blank space or as words 

stretched like skin over meaningsof a night through which two people
have talked till dawn. 


6.

The scream
of an illegitimate voice 

It has ceased to hear itself, therefore
it asks itself 

How do I exist? 

This was the silence I wanted to break in you
I had...Read more of this...
by Rich, Adrienne
...r, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyes camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?

Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.

And after breakfast, I will not ...Read more of this...
by Collins, Billy
...First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schoone...Read more of this...
by Rich, Adrienne
...are eye-to-eye,
as stiff as my brother & me when we attempt

to hug. Soon, the gun fires and the music
quiets, the camera stops tracking and they

relax, shoulders drop, their jaws go slack
& we are all suspended in that perfect moment

when no one knows who took the bullet--
the earth spins below our feet, a blanket of swallows

changes direction suddenly above us, folding
into the rafters of a barn, and the two men

no longer struggle, they simply stand in their wrecka...Read more of this...
by Flynn, Nick
...From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing; 

But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid. 

This he perched upon a tripod -
Crouched...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...FROM his shoulder Hiawatha 
Took the camera of rosewood, 
Made of sliding, folding rosewood; 
Neatly put it all together. 
In its case it lay compactly, 
Folded into nearly nothing; 
But he opened out the hinges, 
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges, 
Till it looked all squares and oblongs, 
Like a complicated figure 
In the Second Book of Euclid. 

This he perched upon a tripod - 
...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing; 

But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid. 

This he perched upon a tripod -
Crouched...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...ld 
Or messengers from other planets. 

Every new machine would have surprised him— 
The car, TV, radio, phone, camera. 
He would've thought he was a savage 
Who didn't understand. 

If he saw a computer, 
Watching people talking on the internet, 
He would have thought it was a civilization 
Much more advanced and ahead of his. 

And if he stayed longer among the messengers 
He would have learned that every child had the knowledge 
And understan...Read more of this...
by Stojanovic, Dejan
...You, my photographer, you, most aware,
Who climbed to the bridge when the iceberg struck,
Climbed with your camera when the ship's hull broke,
And lighted your flashes and, standing passionate there,
Wound the camera in the sudden burst's flare,
Shot the screaming women, and turned and took
Pictures of the iceberg (as the ship's deck shook)
Dreaming like the moon in the night's black air!

You, tiptoe on the rail to film a child!
The nude old woman swimming in the...Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore
...m that would stray; 
The pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the purchaser higgling about the
 odd cent;) 
The camera and plate are prepared, the lady must sit for her daguerreotype;
The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock moves slowly; 
The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open’d lips; 
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled
 neck; 
The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...guiness corks she had collected 
And stitched to an old camisole.

He entered the water at daybreak, 
A man with a camera stood near,
He said "Hurry up and get in, lad, 
You're spoiling my view of the pier."

At last he were in, he were swimming 
With a beautiful overarm stroke,
When the men on the tug saw with horror
That the rope he were tied to had broke.

Then down came a fog, thick as treacle, 
The tug looked so distant and dim
A voice shouted "Help, I am dr...Read more of this...
by Edgar, Marriott
...ad
and thought not of public conflagrations
but of how it would feel on my bare shoulder.
If someone could stop the camera then...
if someone could only stop the camera
and ask me: are you happy?
perhaps I would have noticed
how the morning shone in the reflected
color of lilac. Yes, I might have said
and offered a steaming cup of coffee....Read more of this...
by Pastan, Linda
...ilm
Unreeled by the river. Impossible
To comprehend the comfort of their feet
In the freezing water. You were a camera
Recording reflections you could not fathom.
I made my world perform its utmost for you.
You took it all in with an incredulous joy
Like a mother handed her new baby
By the midwife. Your frenzy made me giddy.
It woke up my dumb, ecstatic boyhood
Of fifteen years before. My masterpiece
Came that black night on the Grantchester road.<...Read more of this...
by Hughes, Ted
...nted pines almost above
The Sierra timberline--could take my picture.
I remember the way he lovingly relished 
Each camera angle, the unwobbling tripod, 
The way he checked each aperture against
The light meter, in love with all things
That were not accidental, & I remember
The care he took when focusing; how
He tried two different lens filters before
He found the one appropriate for that
Sensual, late, slow blush of afternoon
Falling through the one broad bay window....Read more of this...
by Levis, Larry
...our own thing

And follow the beat, hampered by my bag

I just kept going, letting the music and the crowd

Hold me, my camera eye moving in search, in search…

What I’m searching for I don’t know

Searching’s a way of life that has to grow

"All of us who are patients here are searchers after truth"

My son kept saying, his legs shaking from the side effects

Of God-knows- what, pacing the tiny ward kitchen cum smoking room,

Denouncing his ‘illegal section’ and ‘poisonous m...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

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