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Famous Detective Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Ginsberg, Allen
...
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of 
cans following you, and followed in my imagination 
by the store detective. 
We strode down the open corridors together in 
our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every 
frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier. 
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors 
close in an hour. Which way does your beard point 
tonight? 
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the 
supermarket and f...Read more of this...



by Flynn, Nick
...of her bedroom, asking,
Haven't they landed yet? At last
Dugan throws it on the table and says,
This reads like a cheap detective novel
and I've got nothing to say about it. It sits,
naked and white, with everyone's eyes
running over it. The week before
he'd said I had a problem with time,
that in my poems everything
kept happening at once. In 1969,
the voice of Mission Control
told a man named Buzz
that there was a bunch of guys turning blue
down here on Earth, a...Read more of this...

by Hacker, Marilyn
...to work,
you'd start the next month of your Wanderjahr.

I turned the iron key in the rusted lock
(it came, like a detective-story clue,
in a manila envelope, postmarked

elsewhere, unmarked otherwise) while you
stood behind me in the midday heat.
Somnolent shudders marked our progress. Two

horses grazed on a roof across the street.
You didn't believe me until you turned around.
They were both old, one mottled gray, one white.

Past the kitchen's rus...Read more of this...

by Lehman, David
...uddled tourists yearning to be
a mass to Les Halles on Park and 28th for a Salade
Niçoise I've just watched The Singing Detective all
six hours of it and can't get it out of my mind,
the scarecrow that turns into Hitler, the sad-eyed
father wearing a black arm-band, the yellow umbrellas
as Bing Crosby's voice comes out of Michael Gambon's
mouth, "you've got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive,
e-lim-inate the negative" advice as sound today
as in 1945 though it also remains true...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...
And with his jacket Mr. Macaulay tried to put out the flame,
But oh! horrible to relate, it was all in vain. 

Detective Innes, who was passing at the time of the fire,
Rendered help in every way the audience could desire,
By helping many of them for to get out,
Which was a heroic action, without any doubt. 

Oh! it was a pitiful and fearful sight,
To see both old and young struggling with all their might,
For to escape from that merciless fire,
While it roared a...Read more of this...



by Lehman, David
...gave: "His asking of the question 
`Can one play chess without the queen?'" 

10. 

Wittgenstein preferred American detective 
stories to British philosophy. He liked lunch 
and didn't care what it was, "so long as it was 
always the same," noted Professor Malcolm 
of Cornell, a former student, in whose house 
in Ithaca Wittgenstein spent hours doing 
handyman chores. He was happy then. 
There was no need to say a word....Read more of this...

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