Famous Downtown Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Downtown poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous downtown poems. These examples illustrate what a famous downtown poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Sexton, Anne
...other, that waif,
that childhood best friend who comes to play
dress-up and stick-up and jacks and Pick-Up-Sticks,
bike downtown, stick out tongues at the Catholics.
Or form a Piss Club where we all go
in the bushes and peek at each other's sex.
Pop-gunning the street lights like crows.
Not knowing what to do with funny Kotex
so wearing it in our school shoes. Friend, friend,
spooking my lonely hours you were there, but pretend....Read more of this...
by
Doty, Mark
...
The rooftops were glowing above us,
enormous, crystalline, a second city
lit from within. That night
a man on the downtown local stood up
and said, My name is Ezekiel,
I am a poet, and my poem this evening is called
fall. He stood up straight
to recite, a child reminded of his posture
by the gravity of his text, his hands
hidden in the pockets of his coat.
Love is protected, he said,
the way leaves are packed in snow,
the rubies of fall. God is protecting...Read more of this...
by
Berryman, John
...don't put that down,—
he thought he had to think
or with a razor like a skating-rink
have more to say or more to them downtown
in the Christmas season, like a hobby.
Their letters will, released, shake the mapped world
at some point, in the National Geographic.
(Friend, that hurt.)
It's horrible how near she was my hurt
in the old days—now she's a lawyer twirled
halfway around her finger
and I am elated & vague for love of her
and she is chilly & lost for l...Read more of this...
by
Berryman, John
...our continent
all storms since you gave in, on my pup-tent.
I have of blast & counter to remercy you
for hurling me downtown.
We dream of honour, and we get along.
Fate winged me, in the person of a cab
and your stance on the sand.
Think it across, in freezing wind: withstand
my blistered wish: flop, there, to his blind song
who pick up the tab....Read more of this...
by
Berryman, John
...ill see him down
whiskers & tail.
'Wastethrift': Oh one of cunning wives know that
he hoardy-squander, where is nor downtown
neither suburba. Braille....Read more of this...
by
Berryman, John
...ome down'.
Therefore he un-budge, furious. He'd flee
but only Heaven hangs over him foul.
At the crossways, downtown,
he dreams the folks are buying parsnips & suds
and paying rent to foes. He slipt & fell.
It's golden here in the snow.
A mild crack: a far rifle. Bogart's duds
truck back to Wardrobe. Fancy the brain from hell
held out so long. Let go....Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...aiting for the Los Angeles Express to depart
worrying about eternity over the Post Office roof in
the night-time red downtown heaven
staring through my eyeglasses I realized shuddering
these thoughts were not eternity, nor the poverty
of our lives, irritable baggage clerks,
nor the millions of weeping relatives surrounding the
buses waving goodbye,
nor other millions of the poor rushing around from
city to city to see their loved ones,
nor an indian dead with f...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...
battering walls and roofs
until it cleaned away the mess
we'd made. My father told
me this, he told me it ran
downtown and spilled into
the river, which in turn
emptied finally into the sea.
He said this only once
while I sat on the arm
of his chair and stared out
at the banks of gray snow
melting as the March rain
streaked past. All the rest
of that day passed on
into childhood, into nothing,
or perhaps some portion hung
on in a tiny corner of t...Read more of this...
by
Collins, Billy
...view,
is full of hope that he,
the hub of the cosmos
with his hair blown sideways,
will eventually make it all the way downtown....Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...aiting for them. These
were Communists who couldn't walk very far. They barely
had enough strength to make it downtown.
Thousands of Communists, protected by the police, marched
down to Union Square, located in the very heart of San Fran-
cisco. The Communist City Hall riots in 1960 had presented
evidence of it, the police let hundreds of Communists escape,
but the trout fishing in America peace parade was the final
indictment: police protection.
...Read more of this...
by
Jong, Erica
...from nowhere and went nowhere.
This was years ago, before you were born, before
your parents met in a bus station downtown.
She'd come on Friday after work all the way
from Toledo, and he'd dressed in his only suit.
Back then we called this a date, some times
a blind date, though they'd written back and forth
for weeks. What actually took place is now lost.
It's become part of the mythology of a family,
the stories told by children around the dinner ta...Read more of this...
by
Doty, Mark
...omething storied.
The earth was whorled marble,
at that distance. Even the stuck-on porticoes
and collonades downtown were narrative,
somehow, but the buildings my father engineered
were without stories. All I wanted
was something larger than our ordinary sadness --
greater not in scale but in context,
memorable, true to a proportioned,
subtle form. Last year I knew a student,
a half mad boy who finally opened his arms
with a razor, not because he...Read more of this...
by
Matthews, William
...What did I think, a storm clutching a clarinet
and boarding a downtown bus, headed for lessons?
I had pieces to learn by heart, but at twelve
you think the heart and memory are different.
"'It's a poor sort of memory that only works
backwards,' the Queen remarked." Alice in Wonderland.
Although I knew the way music can fill a room,
even with loneliness, which is of course a kind
of company. I could sw...Read more of this...
by
Levis, Larry
...ach night by fathers--
The books lying open to the flat, neglected
Light of dawn; & it settled like dust on windowsills
Downtown, filling the smug cafés, schools,
Banks, offices, taverns, gymnasiums, hotels,
Newsstands, courtrooms, opium parlors, Basque
Restaurants, Armenian steam baths,
French bakeries, & two of the florists' shops--
Their plate glass windows smashed forever.
Finally it tried to infiltrate the exact
Center of my city, a small square bordered
With palm t...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...THE working girls in the morning are going to work--
long lines of them afoot amid the downtown stores
and factories, thousands with little brick-shaped
lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms.
Each morning as I move through this river of young-
woman life I feel a wonder about where it is all
going, so many with a peach bloom of young years
on them and laughter of red lips and memories in
their eyes of dances the night before and p...Read more of this...
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