Famous Carolina Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Promises Promises

by Paul Muldoon
 I am stretched out under the lean-to
Of an old tobacco-shed
On a farm in North Carolina.
A cardinal sings from the dogwood
For the love of marijuana.
His song goes over my head.
There is such splendour in the grass
I might be the picture of happiness.
Yet I am utterly bereft
Of the low hills, the open-ended sky,
The wave upon wave of pasture
Rolling in, and just...Read more of this...

Shirt

by Robert Pinsky
 The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The...Read more of this...

To the Memory of the Brave Americans

by Philip Freneau
 Under General Greene, in South Carolina,
  who fell in the action of September 8, 1781

AT Eutaw Springs the valiant died;
 Their limbs with dust are covered o'er--
Weep on, ye springs, your tearful tide;
 How many heroes are no more!

If in this wreck or ruin, they
 Can yet be thought to claim a tear,
O smite your gentle breast, and...Read more of this...

White Nassau

by Bliss Carman
 There is fog upon the river, there is mirk upon the town;
You can hear the groping ferries as they hoot each other down;
From the Battery to Harlem there's seven miles of slush,
Through looming granite canyons of glitter, noise, and rush.
Are you sick of phones and tickers and crazing cable gongs,
Of the theatres, the hansoms, and the breathless Broadway throngs,
Of...Read more of this...

Letter To Kizer From Seattle

by Richard Hugo
 Dear Condor: Much thanks for that telephonic support
from North Carolina when I suddenly went ape
in the Iowa tulips. Lord, but I'm ashamed.
I was afraid, it seemed, according to the doctor
of impending success, winning some poetry prizes
or getting a wet kiss. The more popular I got,
the softer the soft cry in my head: Don't believe them.
You were never good. Then...Read more of this...

Lesson

by Forrest Hamer
 It was 1963 or 4, summer,
and my father was driving our family
from Ft. Hood to North Carolina in our 56 Buick.
We'd been hearing about Klan attacks, and we knew

Mississippi to be more dangerous than usual.
Dark lay hanging from the trees the way moss did,
and when it moaned light against the windows
that night, my father pulled off the road to...Read more of this...

John Wasson

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Oh! the dew-wet grass of the meadow in North Carolina
Through which Rebecca followed me wailing, wailing,
One child in her arms, and three that ran along wailing,
Lengthening out the farewell to me off to the war with the British,
And then the long, hard years down to the day of Yorktown.
And then my search for Rebecca,
Finding her at last in Virginia,
Two...Read more of this...

Nirvana

by Sidney Lanier
 not much chance,
completely cut loose from
purpose,
he was a young man
riding a bus
through North Carolina
on the wat to somewhere
and it began to snow
and the bus stopped 
at a little cafe
in the hills
and the passengers 
entered.
he sat at the counter
with the others,
he ordered and the 
food arived.
the meal was
particularly
good 
and the
coffee.
the waitress was 
unlike the women
he had
known.
she was unaffected,
there was a...Read more of this...

Rebecca Wasson

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Spring and Summer, Fall and Winter and Spring,
After each other drifting, past my window drifting!
And I lay so many years watching them drift and counting
The years till a terror came in my heart at times,
With the feeling that I had become eternal; at last
My hundredth year was reached! And still I lay
Hearing the tick of the clock, and the...Read more of this...

Plutonian Ode

by Allen Ginsberg
 I

What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
 a new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,
 Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison-
 ous hand, named for Death's planet through the 
 sea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of 
 Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell-
...Read more of this...

Epitaph in a Church-Yard in Charleston South Carolina

by Amy Lowell
 GEORGE AUGUSTUS CLOUGH
A NATIVE OF LIVERPOOL,
DIED SUDDENLY OF "STRANGER'S FEVER"
NOV'R 5th 1843
AGED 22

He died of "Stranger's Fever" when his youth
Had scarcely melted into manhood, so
The chiselled legend runs; a brother's woe
Laid bare for epitaph. The savage ruth
Of a sunny, bright, but alien land, uncouth
With cruel caressing dealt a mortal blow,
And by this summer sea where flowers grow
In tropic splendor,...Read more of this...

He Said To

by Marvin Bell
 crawl toward the machine guns
except to freeze
for explosions and flares.
It was still ninety degrees
at night in North Carolina,
August, rain and all.
The tracer bullets wanted
our asses, which we swore to keep
down, and the highlight
of this preposterous exercise
was finding myself in mud
and water during flares. I
hurried in the darkness--
over things and under things--
to reach the next black pool
in time, and once
I...Read more of this...

Over the Carnage

by Walt Whitman
 OVER the carnage rose prophetic a voice, 
Be not dishearten’d—Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet; 
Those who love each other shall become invincible—they shall yet make Columbia
 victorious.


Sons of the Mother of All! you shall yet be victorious! 
You shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the earth.

No danger shall balk Columbia’s...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Carolina poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace