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Famous Cartoon Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Browning, Robert
...ind us! You don't understand
Nor care to understand about my art,
But you can hear at least when people speak:
And that cartoon, the second from the door
--It is the thing, Love! so such things should be--
Behold Madonna!--I am bold to say.
I can do with my pencil what I know,
What I see, what at bottom of my heart
I wish for, if I ever wish so deep--
Do easily, too--when I say, perfectly,
I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge,
Who listened to the Legate's talk last...Read more of this...



by Sandburg, Carl
...I AM making a Cartoon of a Woman. She is the People.
 She is the Great Dirty Mother.
And Many Children hang on her Apron, crawl at her
 Feet, snuggle at her Breasts....Read more of this...

by Flynn, Nick
...laxies, whole

solar systems collapsing, all of it
acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning

the rules of cartoon animation,

that if a man draws a door on a rock
only he can pass through it.
Anyone else who tries

will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds
should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,
ships going down -- earthbound, tangible

disasters, arenas

where they can be heroes. You can run
back into a burning house, sinking ships

have lifeboa...Read more of this...

by Duhamel, Denise
...father had gone to jail.
I never looked close to see the particulars
of Crater Face's scars. She was a blur, a cartoon
melting. Then, when she healed—her face,
a million pebbles set in cement.
 Even Comet Boy,
who got his name by being so abrasive,
who made fun of everyone, didn't make fun
of her. She walked over the bridge
with the one other white girl who lived
in her neighborhood. Smoke curled
like Slinkies from the factory stacks
above them.
 ...Read more of this...

by Lumsden, Roddy
...nd London, where all the black men
have learned to talk like white men,
where all the white men have begun
to talk like cartoon characters.
One week left until Christmas
and you can't buy a Scrabble set
in any shop. The cartoon characters
are warming their three-fingered hands
around a bonfire made of love letters....Read more of this...



by Raine, Kathleen
...n
is peopled with foot-ballers
film-stars, media-men,
experts, know-all
television personalities,
animated puppets
with cartoon faces —
To whom can we pray
for release from illusion,
from the world-cave,
but Time the destroyer,
the liberator, the purifier?

The curse of Midas
has changed at a touch,
a golden handshake
earthly paradise
to lifeless matter,
where once was seed-time,
summer and winter,
food-chain, factory farming,
monocrops for supermarkets,
pesticides, weed-kill...Read more of this...

by Schwartz, Delmore
...in a muffler, your bent
Figure building the snow man which is meant
For the grandchild's target,
 do you know
This fat cartoon, his eyes pocked in with coal
Nears you each time your breath smokes the air,
Lewdly grinning out of a private nightmare?
He is the white cold shadow of your soul.

You build his comic head, you place his comic hat;
Old age is not so serious, and I
By the window sad and watchful as a cat,
Build to this poem of old age and of snow,
And weep: you a...Read more of this...

by Pinsky, Robert
...e,
Like Walter Holtz--I called him Uncle Walter,
When I was small. A big man with a face
Just like a boxer dog or a cartoon sergeant.
She told me whenever he helped a pretty woman
Try on a shoe in his store, he'd touch her calf
And ask her, "How does that feel?" I was too little
To get the point but pretended to understand.
"Desire, be steady; hope is your delight,
An orb wherein no creature can ever be sorry."

She didn't go to my bar mitzvah, either.
I c...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...iful pea-green back-pasture 
where occasionally a fish jumps, like a wildflower 
in an ornamental spray of spray; 
this cartoon by Raphael for a tapestry for a Pope: 
it does look like heaven. 
But a skeletal lighthouse standing there 
in black and white clerical dress, 
who lives on his nerves, thinks he knows better. 
He thinks that hell rages below his iron feet, 
that that is why the shallow water is so warm, 
and he knows that heaven is not like this. 
Heaven...Read more of this...

by Schwartz, Delmore
...the world once more,
Now he is phthisic, and he is, poor Keats
(Pardon, O Father, unknowable Dear, this word,
Only the cartoon is lucid, only the curse is heard),
Longing for Eden, afraid of the coming war.

The past, a giant shadow like the twilight,
The moving street on which the autos slide,
The buildings' heights, like broken teeth,
Repeat necessity on every side,
The age requires death and is not denied,
He has come as a young man to be hanged once more!

Another ex...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...statue

with crosses, steeples, bells and a vast door that looks like

 a huge mousehole, perhaps from a Tom and Jerry cartoon,

 and written above the door is "Per L'Universo."

 Around five o'clock in the afternoon of my cover for

Trout Fishing in America, people gather in the park across

 the street from the church and they are hungry.

It's sandwich time for the poor.

But they cannot cross the street until the signal is given.

Then they all run across...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Cartoon poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs