Famous Flotsam Poems by Famous Poets

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

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At the Top of My voice

...ll come to terms about our fame;
let our
 common monument be
socialism
 built
 in battle.
Men of posterity
 examine the flotsam of dictionaries:
out of Lethe
 will bob up
 the debris of such words
as “prostitution,” 
 “tuberculosis,” 
 “blockade.” 
For you,
 who are now
 healthy and agile,
the poet
 with the rough tongue
 of his posters,
has licked away consumptives’ spittle.
With the tail of my years behind me,
 I begin to resemble
those monsters,
 excavated dinosaurs.
Comra...Read more of this...
by Mayakovsky, Vladimir


I Do I Will I Have

...woman who can't sleep with the window open.
Moreover, just as I am unsure of the difference between
flora and fauna and flotsam and jetsam,
I am quite sure that marriage is the alliance of two people
one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other
never forgetsam,
And he refuses to believe there is a leak in the water pipe or
the gas pipe and she is convinced she is about to asphyxiate
or drown,
And she says Quick get up and get my hairbrushes off the
windowsill, it's rai...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden

No Doctors Today Thank You

...em was!
I wasn't much of a hand for the boudoirs,
I was generally to be found where the food was.
Does anybody want any flotsam?
I've gotsam.
Does anybody want any jetsam?
I can getsam.
I can play chopsticks on the Wurlitzer,
I can speak Portuguese like a Berlitzer.
I can don or doff my shoes without tying or untying the laces because
I am wearing moccasins,
And I practically know the difference between serums and antitoccasins.
Kind people, don't think me purse-proud, don't ...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden

One Flesh

...is as if they wait 
Some new event: the book he holds unread, 
Her eyes fixed on the shadows overhead. 

Tossed up like flotsam from a former passion, 
How cool they lie. They hardly ever touch, 
Or if they do, it is like a confession 
Of having little feeling - or too much. 
Chastity faces them, a destination 
For which their whole lives were a preparation. 

Strangely apart, yet strangely close together, 
Silence between them like a thread to hold 
And not wind in. And time...Read more of this...
by Jennings, Elizabeth

Restlessness

...at edges the night, with my net, the four
Strands of my eyes and my lips and my hands and my feet, sifting the store
Of flotsam until my soul is tired or satisfied. 

I will catch in my eyes’ quick net 
The faces of all the women as they go past, 
Bend over them with my soul, to cherish the wet
Cheeks and wet hair a moment, saying: “Is it you?” 
Looking earnestly under the dark umbrellas, held fast
Against the wind; and if, where the lamplight blew 
Its rainy swill about us, ...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.


Silver Wedding

...Silver Wedding

The party is over and I sit among
The flotsam that its passing leaves,
The dirty glasses and ***-ends:
Outside, a black wind grieves.

Two decades and a half of marriage;
It does not really seem as long,
Of youth's ebullient song.

David, my son, my loved rival,
And Julia, my tapering daughter,
Now grant me one achievement only;
I turn their wine to water.

And Helen, partner of all these years,...Read more of this...
by Scannell, Vernon

The Law Of The Yukon

...ard's solace, sinking and sinking down;
Steeped in the slime at the bottom, dead to a decent world,
Lost 'mid the human flotsam, far on the frontier hurled;
In the camp at the bend of the river, with its dozen saloons aglare,
Its gambling dens ariot, its gramophones all ablare;
Crimped with the crimes of a city, sin-ridden and bridled with lies,
In the hush of my mountained vastness, in the flush of my midnight skies.
Plague-spots, yet tools of my purpose, so natheless I suff...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

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