Famous Department Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Department poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous department poems. These examples illustrate what a famous department poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...behind fir trees, larks twitter, sparrows cheep cheep cheep
cheep cheep.
July 1983
Caught shoplifting ran out the department store at sunrise and woke up.
August 1983...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...bout it;
You may read the President’s Message, and read nothing about it there;
Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasury department, or in the daily
papers
or
the weekly papers,
Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any accounts of stock.
4
The sun and stars that float in the open air;
The apple-shaped earth, and we upon it—surely the drift of them is something grand!
I do not know what it is, except that it is grand, and that it...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...nd now, I doubt not, the Eternal Dove
A black-fac'd house will love.Credits and CopyrightTogether with the editors, the Department ofEnglish (University of Toronto), and the University of Toronto Press,the following individuals share copyright for the work that wentinto this edition:Screen Design (Electronic Edition): Sian Meikle (University ofToronto Library)Scanning: Sharine Leung (Centre for Computing in the Humanities)...Read more of this...
by
Crashaw, Richard
...I woke ashamed of myself.
Is he that good and kind? Am I that great?
What's my motive dreaming his
manna? What English Department
would that impress? What failure
to be perfect prophet's made up here?
I dream of my kindness to T.S. Eliot
wanting to be a historical poet
and share in his finance of Imagery-
overambitious dream of eccentric boy.
God forbid my evil dreams come true.
Last nite I dreamed of Allen Ginsberg.
T.S. Eliot would've been ashamed of me....Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...s the sole condition --
Patience of Itself --
Patience of opposing forces --
And intact Belief --
Looking on -- is the Department
Of its Audience --
But Transaction -- is assisted
By no Countenance --...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...nd first published by the Loeb Classical Library in 1914. This text has been scanned and proof-read by Edward A. Beach, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.]
I begin to sing of rich-haired Demeter, awful goddess -- of her and her trim-ankled daughter whom Aidoneus [Hades] rapt away, given to him by all-seeing Zeus the loud-thunderer. Apart from Demeter, lady of the golden sword and glorious fruits, she was playing with the dee...Read more of this...
by
Homer,
...What I propose is not
Marxism, which
is not dead yet in
the English department,
Not maximalism, which was
a still-born alternative
to minimalism,
Nor Maxism, which rests on
adulation of Max
Beerbohm, parodist
nonpareil,
But maximism, the love
of adages,
Or Maximism, the advocacy of
maximum gastronomic
pleasure on the model
of a meal at Maxim's
in Paris in, say, 1950.
Is that clear?...Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...at while I lay them on the shrine
Of your white hand, they are mine.Credits and CopyrightTogether with the editors, the Department ofEnglish (University of Toronto), and the University of Toronto Press,the following individuals share copyright for the work that wentinto this edition:Screen Design (Electronic Edition): Sian Meikle (University ofToronto Library)Scanning: Sharine Leung (Centre for Computing in the Humanities)...Read more of this...
by
Crashaw, Richard
...ht until you're outside. It's stacked
in lengths. You can't miss it. The waterfalls are upstairs in
the used plumbing department. "
"What about the animals?"
"Well, what's left of the animals are straight back from
the stream. You'll see a bunch of our trucks parked on a
road by the railroad tracks. Turn right on the road and fol-
low it down past the piles of lumber. The animal shed's right
at the end of the lot. "
"Thanks, " I said. "I think I'11 look at the wat...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...of the mountains, and drove up into the
dawn.
The light behind the trees was like going into a gradual
and strange department store.
"That was a good-looking girl last night, " he said.
"Yeah, "I said. "You did all right. "
"If the shoe fits....." he said.
Owl Snuff Creek was just a small creek, only a few miles
long, but there were some nice trout in it. We got out of the
car and walked a quarter of a mile down the mountainside to
the creek I put my tackle toge...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...were given parties.
Before I left town for school
my birthday went up in smoke
in a fire at City Hall that gutted
the Department of Vital Statistics.
If it weren't for a census report
of a five-year-old White Male
sharing my mother's address
at the Green Street tenement in Worcester
I'd have no documentary proof
that I exist. You are the first,
my dear, to bully me
into these festive occasions.
Sometimes, you say, I wear
an abstracted look that drives you
up the wall, as ...Read more of this...
by
Kunitz, Stanley
...ping night watch on a sleeping typhoid patient … only a clock to talk to … lonesome.
Woman selling gloves … bargain day department store … furious crazy-work of many hands slipping in and out of gloves … lonesome....Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...of glee -
One might fare worse than a Christmas tree.
"So they stood me up with a hundred more
In the blaze of a big department store;
But I thought of the forest dark and still,
And the dew and the snow and the heat and the chill,
And the soft chinook and the summer breeze,
And the dappled deer and the birds and the bees...
I was so homesick I wanted to cry,
But patient I waited for someone to buy.
And some said 'Too big,' and some 'Too small,'
And some passed on saying n...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...ess millions do?"
None whole or clean, " we cry, "or free from stain
Of favour." Wait awhile, till we attain
The Last Department where nor fraud nor fools,
Nor grade nor greed, shall trouble us again.
Fear, Favour, or Affection -- what are these
To the grim Head who claims our services?
I never knew a wife or interest yet
Delay that pukka step, miscalled "decease";
When leave, long overdue, none can deny;
When idleness of all Eternity
Becomes our furlough, and the marig...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...wave and oar;
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.Credits and CopyrightTogether with the editors, the Department ofEnglish (University of Toronto), and the University of Toronto Press,the following individuals share copyright for the work that wentinto this edition:Screen Design (Electronic Edition): Sian Meikle (University ofToronto Library)Scanning: Sharine Leung (Centre for Computing in the Humanities)
Added: Mar 11 2005 | Viewed: 581 times | Commen...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...he pungent atom in the Air
Admits of no debate --
All that is named of Summer Days
Relinquished our Estate --
For what Department of Delight
As positive are we
As Limit of Dominion
Or Dams -- of Ecstasy --...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...daylight
That still gives me a shudder
As if I held the key to mysteries in my hand.
3
Where's the Lost and Found Department,
And the quiet entry,
The undeveloped film
Of the few clear moments
Of our blurred lives?
Where's the drop of blood
And the teeny nail
That pricked my finger
As I bent down to touch the toy
And caught its eye?
4
Evening light,
Make me a Sunday
Go-to meeting shadow
For my toy.
My dearest memories are
Steep stair-wells
In dusty buildings
On...Read more of this...
by
Simic, Charles
...
And when she was in Classics they took away her chair
So she sat on the floor reading Virgil and the Chairman of the
Department sent her an official Christmas card
'For six weeks on the university lawn, learning the
Hebrew alphabet'.
And that was just the beginning: in Oxford Magdalen College
School turned our son away for the Leeds protest so she
Started again, in Magdalen Quad, sitting through Oxford's
Worst ever winter and finally they arrested her on the
Eve...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...ight with them by giving them mansions in
the skies after they're dead and the worms have
eaten 'em.
You tell $6 a week department store girls all they need
is Jesus; you take a steel trust wop, dead without
having lived, gray and shrunken at forty years of
age, and you tell him to look at Jesus on the cross
and he'll be all right.
You tell poor people they don't need any more money
on pay day and even if it's fierce to be out of a job,
Jesus'll fix that up all right, all rig...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...g to a charge nurse
While together we made our case
To the well meaning but unenlightened psychiatrist,
Chair of the department no less, grumbling good-naturedly
At our fumbling formulations of splitting as a diagnostic aid.
When Cyril’s nightmare vision of me in a white coat
Leading a posse of nurses chasing him round his flat
With a flotilla of ambulances on witches’ brooms
Bringing his psychotic core to the fore and
The departmental chairman finally signing the f...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
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