Famous Canned Poems by Famous Poets

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

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I Dream Of My Grandmother And Great-grandmother

...ger washer,
or from the way she stepped back,
wiping her hands on her homemade floursack apron,
and admired her jars of canned peaches
that glowed like amber in the dim cellar light.
I see those women in my mother
as she worked, grinning and happy,
in her garden that spilled its bounty into her arms.
She gave away baskets of peppers,
lettuce, eggplant, gave away bowls of pasts,
meatballs, zeppoli, loaves of homemade bread.
"It was a miracle," she said.
"The more I gave away, ...Read more of this...
by Gillan, Maria Mazziotti


Millennium

...s are no longer fat.
Radio now makes safe the sea—
And the Turk has bought him a derby hat.

Even our sauerkraut now is canned.
Verse is a dangsight more than free.
A “highboy” now is the old dish stand.
Ev’ry flapper has her night key.
Chopin is jazzed into melody.
A child is a “kiddie” and not a “brat.”
Bosses and miners at last agree—
And the Turk has bought him a derby hat.

All firewaters are bravely banned.
There is a ballot for every she.
The hairpin now is a contraban...Read more of this...
by Butler, Ellis Parker

Part 7 of Trout Fishing in America

...a peach tree growing in a coffee can. Their closet

was stuffed with food. Along with shirts, suits and dresses,

were canned goods, eggs and cooking oil.

 My friend told me that she was a very fine cook. That

she could really cook up a good meal, fancy dishes, too, on

that single hot plate, next to the peach tree.

 They had a good world going for them. He had such a soft

voice and manner that he worked as a private nurse for rich

mental patients. He made good money wh...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Something For The Touts The Nuns The Grocery Clerks And You . .

..., antibodies, boxes of
tissue paper.

in the most decent sometimes sun
there is the softsmoke feeling from urns
and the canned sound of old battleplanes
and if you go inside and run your finger
along the window ledge you'll find
dirt, maybe even earth.
and if you look out the window
there will be the day, and as you
get older you'll keep looking
keep looking
sucking your tongue in a little
ah ah no no maybe

some do it naturally
some obscenely
everywhere....Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles

The Bachelors Soliloquy

...give us pause; there's the respect
That makes the joy of single life.
For who would bear her mother's scornful tongue,
Canned goods for tea, the dying furnace fire;
The pangs of sleepless nights when baby cries;
The pain of barking shins upon a chair and
Closing waists that button down the back,
When he himself might all these troubles shirk
With a bare refusal? Who would bundles bear,
And grunt and sweat under a shopping load?
Who would samples match; buy rats for hair,
Car...Read more of this...
by Guest, Edgar Albert


The Gramaphone At Fond-Du-Lac

...d he had made a mistake.
Then Roll-in-the-Mud, a chief of the blood, observed in choice Chippewayan:
"You've brought us canned beef, an' it's now my belief that this here's a case of canned man."

Well, though I'm not strong on the Dago in song, that sure got me goin' for fair.
There was Crusoe an' Scotty, an' Ma'am Shoeman Hank, an' Melber an' Bonchy was there.
'Twas silver an' gold, an' sweetness untold to hear all them big guinneys sing;
An' thick all around an' inhalin' t...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Hideous Chair

...This hideous,
upholstered in gift-wrap fabric, chromed
in places, design possibility

for the future canned ham.
Its genius
wonderful, circa I993.

I've assumed a great many things:
the perversity of choices, affairs
I did or did not have.

But let the record show
that I was happy.

O let the hideous chair

stand! For the Chinese apothecary
with his roots and fluids;
for Paoul at the bank;

for the young woman in Bailey's Drug,
expert on henna; and Warren B...Read more of this...
by Belieu, Erin

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