Famous Customer Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Customer poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous customer poems. These examples illustrate what a famous customer poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Philip Levine
Since I don't know who will be reading
this or even if it will be read, I must
invent someone on the other end
of eternity, a distant cousin laboring
under the same faint stars I labored
all those unnumbered years ago. I make you
like me in everything I can -- a man
or woman in middle years...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
'A shilling's worth of quinine, please,'
The customer demanded.
The druggist went down on his knees
And from a cupboard handed
The waiting man a tiny flask:
'Here, Sir, is what you ask.'
The buyer paid and went away,
The druggist rubbed his glasses,
Then sudden shouted in dismay:
'Of all the silly asses!'
And out into the street he ran
To catch the...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
I've been going right on, page by page,
since we last kissed, two long dolls in a cage,
two hunger-mongers throwing a myth in and out,
double-crossing out lives with doubt,
leaving us separate now, fogy with rage.
But then I've told my readers what I think
and scrubbed out the remainder with my shrink,
have placed my bones in a jar as if possessed,
have pasted...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
IN Abraham Lincoln’s city,
Where they remember his lawyer’s shingle,
The place where they brought him
Wrapped in battle flags,
Wrapped in the smoke of memories
From Tallahassee to the Yukon,
The place now where the shaft of his tomb
Points white against the blue prairie dome,
In Abraham Lincoln’s city … I saw knucks
In the window of Mister Fischman’s second-hand store
On Second Street.
I went in and...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
WHO learns my lesson complete?
Boss, journeyman, apprentice—churchman and atheist,
The stupid and the wise thinker—parents and offspring—merchant, clerk, porter
and
customer,
Editor, author, artist, and schoolboy—Draw nigh and commence;
It is no lesson—it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
And that to another, and every one to another still.
The great laws take and effuse without argument;...Read more of this...
by
Julie Hill Alger
The new war is a week old.
Bombs fall on Baghdad,
missiles on Tel Aviv.
The voice on the radio says
the armament dealers of Europe
are hopeful that a longer war
will be good for business.
They say, as fighting continues
there will be wear and tear
on matériel. Spare parts
must be manufactured,
as well as replacements
for equipment blown apart,
shattered, set afire.
Prudently, the merchants
consult their spreadsheets.
They guard against euphoria
and...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
The barber has accidentally taken off an ear. It lies like
something newborn on the floor in a nest of hair.
Oops, says the barber, but it musn't've been a very good
ear, it came off with very little complaint.
It wasn't, says the customer, it was always overly waxed.
I tried putting a wick in it to burn...Read more of this...
by
Vernon Scannell
The bar he went inside was not
A place he often visited;
He welcomed anonymity;
No one to switch inquisitive
Receivers on, no one could see,
Or wanted to, exactly what
He was, or had been, or would be;
A quiet brown place, a place to drink
And let thought simmer like good stock,
No mirrors to distract, no...Read more of this...
by
Howard Nemerov
Here at the Super Duper, in a glass tank
Supplied by a rill of cold fresh water
Running down a glass washboard at one end
And siphoned off at the other, and so
Perpetually renewed, a herd of lobster
Is made available to the customer
Who may choose whichever one he wants
To carry home and drop into boiling water
And serve with a sauce of melted...Read more of this...
by
Jorie Graham
I have put on my great coat it is cold.
It is an outer garment.
Coarse, woolen.
Of unknown origin.
*
It has a fine inner lining but it is
as an exterior that you see it — a grace.
*
I have a coat I am wearing. It is a fine admixture.
The woman who threw the threads in the two directions
has made, skillfully,...Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
and this time they are absolutely right.
Take the night I mentioned to you
I wanted to write about the madmen,
as the newspapers so blithely call them,
who attack art, not in reviews,
but with breadknives and...Read more of this...
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