Famous Cotton Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Cotton poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous cotton poems. These examples illustrate what a famous cotton poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Plath, Sylvia
...he veils were killing my days.
To you they are only transparencies, clear air.
But my god, the clouds are like cotton.
Armies of them. They are carbon monoxide.
Sweetly, sweetly I breathe in,
Filling my veins with invisibles, with the million
Probable motes that tick the years off my life.
You are silver-suited for the occasion. O adding machine-----
Is it impossible for you to let something go and have it go whole?
Must you stamp each piece pu...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...d gathering of the products.
Busy the far, the sunlit panorama;
Prairie, orchard, and yellow grain of the North,
Cotton and rice of the South, and Louisianian cane;
Open, unseeded fallows, rich fields of clover and timothy,
Kine and horses feeding, and droves of sheep and swine,
And many a stately river flowing, and many a jocund brook,
And healthy uplands with their herby-perfumed breezes,
And the good green grass—that delicate miracle, the ever-recurring grass.Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ays!
Always our own feuillage!
Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the
cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas!
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New
Mexico!
Always soft-breath’d Cuba!
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes
drain’d
by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the eighty-third year of These States—the three and a half millions of
square...Read more of this...
by
Prelutsky, Jack
...NUT PUMPKIN BUBBLEGUM
BROCCOLI BANANA BLUSTER
CHOCOLATE CHOP SUEY CLUSTER
AVOCADO BRUSSELS SPROUT
PERIWINKLE SAUERKRAUT
COTTON CANDY CARROT CUSTARD
CAULIFLOWER COLA MUSTARD
ONION DUMPLING DOUBLE DIP
TURNIP TRUFFLE TRIPLE FLIP
GARLIC GUMBO GRAVY GUAVA
LENTIL LEMON LIVER LAVA
ORANGE OLIVE BAGEL BEET
WATERMELON WAFFLE WHEAT
I am Ebenezer Bleezer,
I run BLEEZER'S ICE CREAM STORE,
taste a flavor from my freezer,
you will surely ask for more....Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...>
Upper Accommodation Road no longer forks in two, one way
Had Deidre’s mother’s shop, with odds and ends, combs and
Cotton reels and hairgrips on cards; the road and the
Shop have gone and Deidre has died and on the other side
The Co-op is long gone where we got your mother’s
Shopping once a week from.
54
Sugarbag blue
I called the colour
Of your knickers
As you stood over
The basket
We struggled
Back with.
Your eyes reflected
The image of me ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...
Oakum, the oakum-chisel, the caulking-iron—the kettle of boiling vault-cement, and
the
fire
under the kettle,
The cotton-bale, the stevedore’s hook, the saw and buck of the sawyer, the mould of
the
moulder, the working-knife of the butcher, the ice-saw, and all the work with ice,
The implements for daguerreotyping—the tools of the rigger, grappler, sail-maker,
block-maker,
Goods of gutta-percha, papier-maché, colors, brushes, brush-making, glazier’s
implements,
O...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...ies scarified
Where keen Neglect his lash hath plied,
Dwelt one I knew of old, who played at toil,
And gave to coquette Cotton soul and soil.
Scorning the slow reward of patient grain,
He sowed his heart with hopes of swifter gain,
Then sat him down and waited for the rain.
He sailed in borrowed ships of usury --
A foolish Jason on a treacherous sea,
Seeking the Fleece and finding misery.
Lulled by smooth-rippling loans, in idle trance
He lay, content that unthrif...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
..., by their blazing fires, encamped on its borders.
Now through rushing chutes, among green islands, where plumelike
Cotton-trees nodded their shadowy crests, they swept with the current,
Then emerged into broad lagoons, where silvery sand-bars
Lay in the stream, and along the wimpling waves of their margin,
Shining with snow-white plumes, large flocks of pelicans waded.
Level the landscape grew, and along the shores of the river,
Shaded by china-trees, in the midst of...Read more of this...
by
Hughes, Langston
...venturous hands,
Turning the rich soil went the plow in many hands
That planted and harvested the food that fed
And the cotton that clothed America.
Clang against the trees went the ax into many hands
That hewed and shaped the rooftops of America.
Splash into the rivers and the seas went the boat-hulls
That moved and transported America.
Crack went the whips that drove the horses
Across the plains of America.
Free hands and slave hands,
Indentured hands, adven...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...he flex of his waist and knees—dress does
not hide him;
The strong, sweet, supple quality he has, strikes through the cotton and flannel;
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more;
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.
The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress,
their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swim...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for a new home.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.
The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night I rest easy i...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...and thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his
axe;
Flatboatmen make fast, towards dusk, near the cottonwood or pekan-trees;
Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river, or through those
drain’d by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansaw;
Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahoochee or Altamahaw;
Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons around
them;
In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ld;
Welcome are lands of wheat and maize—welcome those of the grape;
Welcome are lands of sugar and rice;
Welcome the cotton-lands—welcome those of the white potato and sweet potato;
Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies;
Welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands, openings;
Welcome the measureless grazing-lands—welcome the teeming soil of orchards, flax, honey,
hemp;
Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands;
Lands rich as lands of gol...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...vement,
The rills of Civilization.
Materials here, under your eye, shall change their shape, as if by magic;
The cotton shall be pick’d almost in the very field,
Shall be dried, clean’d, ginn’d, baled, spun into thread and cloth, before you:
You shall see hands at work at all the old processes, and all the new ones;
You shall see the various grains, and how flour is made, and then bread baked by the
bakers;
You shall see the crude ores of California and Nevada pass...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...—words to the lands.
O the lands! interlink’d, food-yielding lands!
Land of coal and iron! Land of gold! Lands of cotton, sugar, rice!
Land of wheat, beef, pork! Land of wool and hemp! Land of the apple and grape!
Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! Land of those
sweet-air’d interminable plateaus!
Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!
Lands where the northwest Columbia winds, and where the southwest Colorado
winds!
Land...Read more of this...
by
Murray, Les
...his compass?
They are never Robes
as other bareleg outfits have been:
the toga, the kilt, the lava-lava
the Mahatma's cotton dhoti;
archbishops and field marshals
at their ceremonies never wear shorts.
The very word
means underpants in North America.
Shorts can be Tat,
Land-Rovering bush-environmental tat,
socio-political ripped-and-metal-stapled tat,
solidarity-with-the-Third World tat tvam asi,
likewise track-and-field shorts worn to parties
and the further ...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...money he must have, too long delay
Had turned the usurer to a ruffian.
"But let me take my ship, with many bales
Of cotton stuffs dyed crimson, green, and blue,
Cunningly patterned, made to suit the taste
Of mandarin's ladies; when my battered sails
Open for home, such stores will I bring you
That all your former ventures will be counted waste.
13
Such light and foamy silks, like crinkled cream,
And indigo more blue than sun-whipped seas,
Spices and fragrant trees, a...Read more of this...
by
Hughes, Langston
...rossed the red sea
Carrying in my body the seed of the free.
I am the woman who worked in the field
Bringing the cotton and the corn to yield.
I am the one who labored as a slave,
Beaten and mistreated for the work that I gave --
Children sold away from me, I'm husband sold, too.
No safety , no love, no respect was I due.
Three hundred years in the deepest South:
But God put a song and a prayer in my mouth .
God put a dream like steel in my soul....Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...of-pearl the line
Completed. On the other side,
The creamy porcelain of the face
Bore diamond hours, and no lace
Of cotton or silk could ever be
Tossed into being more airily
Than the filmy golden hands; the time
Seemed to tick away in rhyme.
When, at dusk, the Shadow grew
Upon the wall, Paul's work was through.
Holding the watch, he spoke to her:
"Lady, Beautiful Shadow, stir
Into one brief sign of being.
Turn your eyes this way, and seeing
This watch, made f...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...
I've got shirts to press
The tots to dress
The can to be cut
I gotta clean up this hut
Then see about the sick
And the cotton to pick.
Shine on me, sunshine
Rain on me, rain
Fall softly, dewdrops
And cool my brow again.
Storm, blow me from here
With your fiercest wind
Let me float across the sky
'Til I can rest again.
Fall gently, snowflakes
Cover me with white
Cold icy kisses and
Let me rest tonight.
Sun, rain, curving sky
Mountain, oceans, leaf and ston...Read more of this...
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