Famous Canyon Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Canyon poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous canyon poems. These examples illustrate what a famous canyon poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...pped me tight as I lay fast asleep:
"The river's kicking like a steer . . . run out the forward sweep!
That's Hell-gate Canyon right ahead; I know of old its roar,
And . . . I'll be damned! the ice is jammed! We've GOT to make the shore."
With one wild leap I gripped the sweep. The night was black as sin.
The float-ice crashed and ripped and smashed, and stunned us with its din.
And near and near, and clear and clear I heard the canyon boom;
And swift and strong we swept alo...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...d her alone, laughing in the sun
And saying that when she was first married
She lived in the old farmhouse up Garapatas Canyon.
(It is empty now, the roof has fallen
But the log walls hang on the stone foundation; the redwoods
Have all been cut down, the oaks are standing;
The place is now more solitary than ever before.)
"When I was nursing my second baby
My husband found a day-old fawn hid in a fern-brake
And brought it; I put its mouth to the breast
Rather than let it star...Read more of this...
by
Jeffers, Robinson
...etting up
in the dark
to talk to you."
Poetry said: "But think about the time
you saw the moon
over that small canyon
that you liked so much better
than the grand one--and how suprised you were
that the moonlight was green
and you still had
one good eye
to see it with
Think of that!"
"I'll join the church!" I said,
huffily, turning my face to the wall.
"I'll learn how to pray again!"
"Let me ask you," said Poetry.
"When you pray, what do you t...Read more of this...
by
Walker, Alice
...uit, leaves whose scent
was that of clove in the godsome
air, as now, thinking of his fabulous
sleep, I stand on this canyon floor
and watch light slowly close
on water I can't be sure is there....Read more of this...
by
Irwin, Mark
...cisco County Hospital.
He can practically look right down into the wards and see
old magazines eroded like the Grand Canyon from endless
readings. He can practically hear the patients thinking about
breakfast: I hate milk and thinking about dinner: I hate peas,
and then he can watch the hospital slowly drown at night,
hopelessly entangled in huge bunches of brick seaweed.
He bought that window at the Cleveland Wrecking Yard.
My other friend bought an iron roof at t...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...and had the intelligence
of a dinosaur. Tom Martin Creek was a small creek with cold,
clear water and poured out of a canyon and through a culvert
under the highway and then into the Klamath.
I dropped a fly in a small pool just below where the creek
flowed out of the culvert and took a nine-inch trout. It was
a good-looking fish and fought all over the top of the pool.
Even though the creek was very small and poured out of a
steep brushy canyon filled with poison ...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...painting is in the house next door. "
I fished upstream coming ever closer and closer to the
narrow staircase of the canyon. Then I went up into it as if
I were entering a department store. I caught three trout in
the lost and found department. He didn't even put his tackle
together. He just followed after me, drinking port wine and
poking a stick at the world.
"This is a beautiful creek, " he said. "It reminds me of
Evangeline's hearing aid. "
We ended up at a la...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...
Salt Creek.
The smell of the sheep grazing in the valley has done it
to them. Their voices water and come down the canyon, past
the summer homes. Their voices are a creek, running down
the mountain, over the bones of sheep, living and dead.
O, THERE ARE COYOTES UP ON SALT CREEK so the
sign on the trail says, and it also says, WATCH OUT FOR
CYANIDE CAPSULES PUT ALONG THE CREEK TO KILL
COYOTES. DON'T PICK THEM UP AND EAT THEM. NOT
THEY'LL KILL YOU. LEAVE
UNLESS YO...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...hat he's found in his first villanelle.
Credit: Copyright © 1995 by Hayden Carruth. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org...Read more of this...
by
Carruth, Hayden
...amp or dive, mucklucks or patent shoon;
On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw;
In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw;
By battle, murder or sudden wealth, by pestilence, hooch or lead--
I swore on the Book I would follow and look till I found my tombless dead.
For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind was mighty sot
On a dinky patch with flowers and grass in a civilized bone-yard lot.
And where he died or how he died, it didn...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...their clothes,
dirtying their shoes.
And God is filling me,
though there are times of doubt
as hollow as the Grand Canyon,
still God is filling me.
He is giving me the thoughts of dogs,
the spider in its intricate web,
the sun
in all its amazement,
and a slain ram
that is the glory,
the mystery of great cost,
and my heart,
which is very big,
I promise it is very large,
a monster of sorts,
takes it all in--
all in comes the fury of love....Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...urtain of snow wavers
and falls back.
Credit: Copyright © 1995 by Hayden Carruth. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org...Read more of this...
by
Carruth, Hayden
...I followed the narrow cliffside trail half way up the mountain
Above the deep river-canyon. There was a little cataract crossed the path,
flinging itself
Over tree roots and rocks, shaking the jeweled fern-fronds, bright bubbling
water
Pure from the mountain, but a bad smell came up. Wondering at it I clam-
bered down the steep stream
Some forty feet, and found in the midst of bush-oak and laurel,
Hung like a bird's nest on the precipi...Read more of this...
by
Jeffers, Robinson
...'Way high up the Mogollons
That top-hawse done his best,
Through whippin' brush and rattlin' stones,
From canyon-floor to crest.
But ever when Bob turned and hoped
A limp remains to find,
A red-eyed lion, belly roped
But healthy, loped behind.
"_Oh, glory be to me" grunts he._
"_This glory trail is rough,_
_Yet even till the Judgment Morn_
_I'll keep this dally 'round the horn,_
_For never any hero born_
_Could...Read more of this...
by
Clark, Badger
...swift as a shadow, it crosses the city,
And murmurs beyond far walls to the sea,
Leaving a glimmer of water in the dark canyons,
And silver falling from eave and tree.
One, from his high bright window, looking down,
Peers like a dreamer over the rain-bright town,
And thinks its towers are like a dream.
The western windows flame in the sun's last flare,
Pale roofs begin to gleam.
Looking down from a window high in a wall
He sees us all;
Lifting our pallid faces towards the r...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...n broken slow cascades.
The gardens extend before us . . . We spread out swiftly;
Trees are above us, and darkness. The canyon fades . . .
And we recall, with a gleaming stab of sadness,
Vaguely and incoherently, some dream
Of a world we came from, a world of sun-blue hills . . .
A black wood whispers around us, green eyes gleam;
Someone cries in the forest, and someone kills.
We flow to the east, to the white-lined shivering sea;
We reach to the west, where the whirling su...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...ess and unfit--
You're not so bad a fellow after all.
Do you recollect the bitter Arctic night;
Your camp beside the canyon on the trail;
Your tent a tiny square of orange light;
The moon above consumptive-like and pale;
Your supper cooked, your little stove aglow;
You tired, but snug and happy as a child?
Then 'twas "Turkey in the Straw" till your lips were nearly raw,
And you hurled your bold defiance at the Wild.
Do you recollect the flashing, lashing pain;
The gul...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...heart was broken straining at sweep and oar.
We roused Lake Marsh with a chorus, we drifted many a mile;
There was the canyon before us--cave-like its dark defile;
The shores swept faster and faster; the river narrowed to wrath;
Waters that hissed disaster reared upright in our path.
Beneath us the green tumult churning, above us the cavernous gloom;
Around us, swift twisting and turning, the black, sullen walls of a tomb.
We spun like a chip in a mill-race; our hearts hamm...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...ing through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.
My fingers touching her side brought me the reason--
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, st...Read more of this...
by
Stafford, William
...Paul Kruger.
Valerie, who had sat the twenty days
beside me, now gently told me tales
of my time-warp. The operative canyon
stretched, stapled, with dry roseate walls
down my belly. Seaweed gel
plugged views of my pluck and offal.
The only poet whose liver
damage hadn't been self-inflicted,
grinned my agent. A momentarily
holed bowel had released flora
who live in us and will eat us
when we stop feeding them the earth.
I had, it did seem, rehearsed
the privat...Read more of this...
by
Murray, Les
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