Famous Exotic Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

humming-bird pie

by Rg Gregory
 the paiute indians had the bird sussed
a humming bird (loaded with seeds) set out 
to see beyond the sun - it aimed to be frugal
rationing itself to only one seed a day - even so
it ran out long before it meant to
it gave up (getting nowhere and seeing nothing) -

all of which rings a human bell or two
such an...Read more of this...

Exotic Perfume

by Charles Baudelaire
 WHEN with closed eyes in autumn's eves of gold 
I breathe the burning odours of your breast, 
Before my eyes the hills of happy rest 
Bathed in the sun's monotonous fires, unfold. 

Islands of Lethe where exotic boughs 
Bend with their burden of strange fruit bowed down, 
Where men are upright, maids have never grown 
Unkind, but bear a...Read more of this...

The Absinthe Drinkers

by Robert William Service
 He's yonder, on the terrace of the Cafe de la Paix,
The little wizened Spanish man, I see him every day.
He's sitting with his Pernod on his customary chair;
He's staring at the passers with his customary stare.
He never takes his piercing eyes from off that moving throng,
That current cosmopolitan meandering along:
Dark diplomats from Martinique, pale Rastas from Peru,
An Englishman from...Read more of this...

Unusual Love

by Dejan Stojanovic
Our desires flew like birds in the mornings 
When we were waked by the bells of dreams 
Hypnotized and ready for another round of living 

We would walk down the street of a foreign city mesmerized 
By our own history seen on the streets and in the gardens 
Filled with exotic flowers and the grass; you loved the grass 

You...Read more of this...

Common Things

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
 I like to hear of wealth and gold, 
And El Doradoes in their glory; 
I like for silks and satins bold 
To sweep and rustle through a story.

The nightingale is sweet of song; 
The rare exotic smells divinely; 
And knightly men who stride along, 
The role heroic carry finely.

But then, upon the other hand, 
Our minds have got a...Read more of this...

Refrigerator 1957

by Thomas Lux
 More like a vault -- you pull the handle out
and on the shelves: not a lot,
and what there is (a boiled potato
in a bag, a chicken carcass
under foil) looking dispirited,
drained, mugged. This is not
a place to go in hope or hunger.
But, just to the right of the middle
of the middle door shelf, on fire, a lit-from-within red,
heart red, sexual...Read more of this...

Child of Europe

by Czeslaw Milosz
 1
We, whose lungs fill with the sweetness of day.
Who in May admire trees flowering
Are better than those who perished.

We, who taste of exotic dishes,
And enjoy fully the delights of love,
Are better than those who were buried.

We, from the fiery furnaces, from behind barbed wires
On which the winds of endless autumns howled,
We, who remember battles where the wounded air roared...Read more of this...

My Indian In-laws

by Belinda Subraman
 I remember India:
palm trees, monkey families,
fresh lime juice in the streets,
the sensual inundation
of sights and smells
and excess in everything.
I was exotic and believable there.

I was walking through dirt
in my sari, 
to temples of the deities
following the lead
of my Indian in-laws.
I was scooping up fire with my hands,
glancing at idols that held no meaning for me,
being marked by the ash.

They...Read more of this...

The Battle

by Robert William Service
 Dames should be doomed to dungeons
Who masticate raw onions.

She was the cuddly kind of Miss
 A man can love to death;
But when I sought to steal a kiss
 I wilted from a breath
With onion odour so intense
 I lost my loving sense.

Yet she was ever in my thought
 Like some exotic flower,
And so a garlic bulb I bought
 And...Read more of this...

Leeds

by Barry Tebb
 O my beloved city,

How many times have I deserted you

For the sights and sounds of Babylon?

How often and from how far

Have I conjured your broad boulevards

O Quartier Latin, crowded street caf?s

With white and scarlet awnings, gold

Adornings on stone cupolas, Byzantine domes

And plinths of equine statuary before

The Gare du Nord, grumbling fading

Faience of the Gare de l’Est?



Often, O how often,...Read more of this...

Bad Day At The Beauty Salon

by Maggie Estep
 I was a 20 year old unemployed receptionist with
dyed orange dreadlocks sprouting out of my skull. I needed a job, but first,
I needed a haircut.

So I head for this beauty salon on Avenue B.
I'm gonna get a hairdo.
I'm gonna look just like those hot Spanish haircut models, become brown
and bodacious, grow some 7 inch fingernails painted ***** red and...Read more of this...

The Steeple-Jack

by Marianne Moore
 Dürer would have seen a reason for living
 in a town like this, with eight stranded whales
to look at; with the sweet sea air coming into your house
on a fine day, from water etched
 with waves as formal as the scales
on a fish.

One by one in two's and three's, the seagulls keep
 flying back and forth over the town...Read more of this...

The Angel and the Clown

by Vachel Lindsay
 I saw wild domes and bowers 
And smoking incense towers 
And mad exotic flowers 
In Illinois. 
Where ragged ditches ran 
Now springs of Heaven began 
Celestial drink for man 
In Illinois. 

There stood beside the town 
Beneath its incense-crown 
An angel and a clown 
In Illinois. 
He was as Clowns are: 
She was snow and star 
With eyes that...Read more of this...

Mi Musa Triste (My Sad Muse)

by Delmira Agustini
SpanishVagos preludios. En la noche espléndidaSu voz de perlas una fuente calla,Cuelgan las brisas sus celestes pifanosEn el follaje. Las cabezas pardasDe los búhos acechan.Las flores se abren más, como asombradas.Los cisnes de marfil tienden los cuellosEn las lagunas pálidas.Selene mira del azul. Las frondasTiemblan… y todo! hasta el silencio, calla…Es que ella pasa con su boca tristeY el gran...Read more of this...

Nothing Stays Put

by Amy Clampitt
 In memory of Father Flye, 1884-1985


The strange and wonderful are too much with us.
The protea of the antipodes—a great,
globed, blazing honeybee of a bloom—
for sale in the supermarket! We are in
our decadence, we are not entitled.
What have we done to deserve
all the produce of the tropics—
this fiery trove, the largesse of it
heaped up like cannonballs, these pineapples, bossed
and crested,...Read more of this...

Liberty Tree

by Thomas Paine
In a chariot of light from the regions of day,
The Goddess of Liberty came;
Ten thousand celestials directed the way,
And hither conducted the dame.
A fair budding branch from the gardens above,
Where millions with millions agree,
She brought in her hand as a pledge of her love,
And the plant she named Liberty Tree.
The celestial exotic struck deep in the ground,
Like a native it...Read more of this...

The Return

by Dejan Stojanovic
I visited many places, 
Some of them quite 
Exotic and far away, 
But I always returned to myself.
...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Exotic poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace