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Famous Flannel Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...At home, in my flannel gown, like a bear to its floe,
I clambered to bed; up the globe's impossible sides
I sailed all night—till at last, with my black beard,
My furs and my dogs, I stood at the northern pole.

There in the childish night my companions lay frozen,
The stiff fur knocked at my starveling throat,
And I gave my great sigh: the flakes came huddling,
Were they ...Read more of this...
by Jarrell, Randall



...anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel
petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt
like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the
English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the
daft and happy hills bar...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan
...-pinch I will pay the price,
 But God! let me be free;
For once I know in the long ago,
 They made a slave of me.

In a flannel shirt from earth's clean dirt,
 Here, pal, is my calloused hand!
Oh, I love each day as a rover may,
 Nor seek to understand.
To enjoy is good enough for me;
 The gipsy of God am I;
Then here's a hail to each flaring dawn!
And here's a cheer to the night that's gone!
And may I go a-roaming on
 Until the day I die!

Then every star shall sing to me
It...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...of haws.

Was she Aurora, or the goddess Flora,
Artemidora, or Venus bright,
or Anorexia, who left
a lemon stain on my flannel sheet?

It's all much of a muchness.

In Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital
a kidney machine
supports the latest hunger-striker
to have called off his fast, a saline
drip into his bag of brine.

A lick and a promise. Cuckoo spittle.
I hand my sample to Doctor Maw.
She gives me back a confident All Clear....Read more of this...
by Muldoon, Paul
...sed her Christian gifts
Of knitting stockings, stitching petticoats,
Because we are of one flesh after all
And need one flannel (with a proper sense
Of difference in the quality) -- and still
The book-club, guarded from your modern trick
Of shaking dangerous questions from the crease,
Preserved her intellectual. She had lived
A sort of cage-bird life, born in a cage,
Accounting that to leap from perch to perch
Was act and joy enough for any bird.
Dear heaven, how silly are th...Read more of this...
by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett



...ff! 
As when a traveller, bound from North to South, 
Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France? 
In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain? 
In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers! 
Linen goes next, and last the skin itself, 
A superfluity at Timbuctoo. 
When, through his journey, was the fool at ease? 
I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world, 
I take and like its way of life; I think 
My brothers, who administer the means, 
Live better for my c...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...ick building 
at the foot of Green Street --
that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.
I'm the boy in the white flannel gown
sprawled on this coarse gravel bed
searching the starry sky, 
waiting for the world to end....Read more of this...
by Kunitz, Stanley
...ced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked a...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...his waist and knees—dress does
 not hide him; 
The strong, sweet, supple quality he has, strikes through the cotton and flannel;
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more; 
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side. 

The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress,
 their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards, 
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...egun,
and they don't just pluck a man's head
 like a turnip.
Look, forget all this.
If you have any money,
 buy me some flannel underwear:
my sciatica is acting up again.
And don't forget,
a prisoner's wife
 must always think good thoughts....Read more of this...
by Hikmet, Nazim
...
In traffic of wit expertly maneuver
And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.

Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel,
Your lipstick grinning on our coat,
So gaily in love's unbreakable heaven
Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.

Be with me, darling, early and late. Smash glasses—
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break....Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard
...slipped off his top-coat and his muffler.
He slipped off his bottle-green coat
And his flowered waistcoat.
He put on a flannel dressing-gown,
And tied a peaked night-cap under his chin.
He wound his large gold watch
And placed it under his pillow.
Then he tiptoed over to the window and pulled back the curtain.
There was the moon dodging in and out of the clouds;
But behind him was his quiet candle.
There was the wind whisking along the street.
The window rattled, but it was ...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...— and anyway we waved.
No shoes. No angry doors.
We folded clothes and went
our separate ways.
You left behind that flannel shirt
of yours I liked but remembered to take
your toothbrush. Where are you tonight?

Richard, it’s Christmas Eve again
and old ghosts come back home.
I’m sitting by the Christmas tree
wondering where did we go wrong.

Okay, we didn’t work, and all
memories to tell you the truth aren’t good.
But sometimes there were good times.
Love was ...Read more of this...
by Cisneros, Sandra
...blossoms in summer night mist filling the garden with white spots;
 a cavalryman’s yellow silk handkerchief stuck in a flannel pocket over the left side of the shirt, over the ventricles of blood, over the pumps of the heart.

Bring a concertina after sunset under the apple trees.
Let romance stutter to the western stars, “Excuse … me…”...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...drawing its tattered shreds, 
worn out with embraces. It's 
the fillip of novelty. It's a fire in the blood. 

Oh get a flannel shirt], white flannel 
or pongee. You'd look so well! 
I married you because I liked your nose.
I wanted you! I wanted you 
in spite of all they'd say— 

Rain and light, mountain and rain,
rain and river. Will you love me always? 
—A car overturned and two crushed bodies 
under it.—Always! Always! 
And the white moon already up. 
White. Clean. All th...Read more of this...
by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)
...s not well." 

Endure your mother's timely stare, 
Your father's righteous ire, 
And do not wriggle on your chair 
Like flannel in the fire. 

Be silent: you may chatter loud 
When you are fully grown, 
Surrounded by a silent crowd 
Of children of your own. 

If you should suddenly feel bored 
And much inclined to yawning, 
Your little hand will best afford 
A modest useful awning. 

Think highly of the Cat: and yet 
You need not therefore think 
That portly strangers like yo...Read more of this...
by Raleigh, Sir Walter
...in St. Joe,
For what he took hold of he never let go!
An' a dude that come courtin' our girl left a slice
Of his white flannel suit with our bench-legged fyce!

He wuz good to us kids - when we pulled at his fur
Or twisted his tail he would never demur;
He seemed to enjoy all our play an' our chaff,
For his tongue 'u'd hang out an' he'd laff an' he'd laff;
An' once, when the Hobart boy fell through the ice,
He wuz drug clean ashore by that bench-legged fyce!

We all hev our ...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene
...Was blooming round our feet;
Red hair she had and golden skin,
Her sulky lips were shaped for sin,
Her sturdy legs were flannel-slack'd
The strongest legs in Pontefract.

The light and dangling licorice flowers
Gave off the sweetest smells;
From various black Victorian towers
The Sunday evening bells
Came pealing over dales and hills
And tanneries and silent mills
And lowly streets where country stops
And little shuttered corner shops.

She cast her blazing eyes on me
And plu...Read more of this...
by Betjeman, John
...hall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red a...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...Pobble who has no toes
Swam across the Bristol Channel;
But before he set out he wrapped his nose
In a piece of scarlet flannel.
For his Aunt Jobiska said "No harm
Can come to his toes if his nose is warm;
And it's perfectly known that a Pobble's toes
Are safe, -- provided he minds his nose!"

The Pobble swam fast and well,
And when boats or ships came near him,
He tinkledy-blinkledy-winkled a bell,
So that all the world could hear him.
And all the Sailors and Admirals cried,...Read more of this...
by Lear, Edward

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry