Famous Garlic Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Curtain

by Hayden Carruth
 Just over the horizon a great machine of death is roaring and

 rearing.
One can hear it always. Earthquake, starvation, the ever-

 renewing field of corpse-flesh.
In this valley the snow falls silently all day and out our window
We see the curtain of it shifting and folding, hiding us away in

 our little house,
We see earth smoothened and beautified, made like...Read more of this...

Mandalay

by Rudyard Kipling
 By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"
 Come you back to Mandalay,
 Where the old Flotilla lay:
 Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from...Read more of this...

Bleezers Ice Cream

by Jack Prelutsky
 I am Ebenezer Bleezer,
I run BLEEZER'S ICE CREAM STORE,
there are flavors in my freezer
you have never seen before,
twenty-eight divine creations
too delicious to resist,
why not do yourself a favor,
try the flavors on my list:

COCOA MOCHA MACARONI
TAPIOCA SMOKED BALONEY
CHECKERBERRY CHEDDAR CHEW
CHICKEN CHERRY HONEYDEW
TUTTI-FRUTTI STEWED TOMATO
TUNA TACO BAKED POTATO
LOBSTER LITCHI LIMA BEAN
MOZZARELLA MANGOSTEEN
ALMOND HAM MERINGUE SALAMI
YAM ANCHOVY PRUNE PASTRAMI
SASSAFRAS SOUVLAKI HASH
SUKIYAKI SUCCOTASH
BUTTER...Read more of this...

On The Eating Of Mice

by Russell Edson
 A woman prepared a mouse for her husband's dinner,
roasting it with a blueberry in its mouth. 

 At table he uses a dentist's pick and a surgeon's scalpel,
bending over the tiny roastling with a jeweler's loupe . . . 

 Twenty years of this: curried mouse, garlic and butter
mouse, mouse sauteed in its own fur, Salisbury mouse,
mouse-in-the-trap, baked in...Read more of this...

Toledo

by Robert William Service
 Three widows of the Middle West
We're grimly chewing gum;
The Lido chef a quail had dressed
With garlic and with rum,
And they were painfully oppressed
For they had eaten some.

Said One: "This famed El Greco guy
Gives me the blessed pip;
Them Saints look like they want to die -
Let's give our guide the slip,
And in some bodega close by
A glass of vino sip."

Said...Read more of this...

Mud Soup

by Carolyn Kizer
 1.

Had the ham bone, had the lentils,
Got to meat store for the salt pork,
Got to grocery for the celery.
Had the onions, had the garlic,
Borrowed carrots from the neighbor.
Had the spices, had the parsley.
One big kettle I had not got;
Borrowed pot and lid from landlord.

2.

Dice the pork and chop the celery,
Chop the onions, chop the carrots,
Chop the tender index finger.
Put...Read more of this...

The Little Workgirl

by Robert William Service
 Three gentlemen live close beside me --
A painter of pictures bizarre,
A poet whose virtues might guide me,
A singer who plays the guitar;
And there on my lintel is Cupid;
I leave my door open, and yet
These gentlemen, aren't they stupid!
They never make love to Babette.

I go to the shop every morning;
I work with my needle and thread;
Silk, satin and velvet adorning,
Then...Read more of this...

Morning News

by Marilyn Hacker
 Spring wafts up the smell of bus exhaust, of bread
and fried potatoes, tips green on the branches,
repeats old news: arrogance, ignorance, war.
A cinder-block wall shared by two houses
is new rubble. On one side was a kitchen
sink and a cupboard, on the other was
a bed, a bookshelf, three framed photographs.

Glass is shattered across the photographs;
two half-circles of hardened pocket bread
sit...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...

Half-And-Half

by Naomi Shihab Nye
 You can't be, says a Palestinian Christian
on the first feast day after Ramadan.
So, half-and-half and half-and-half.
He sells glass. He knows about broken bits,
chips. If you love Jesus you can't love
anyone else. Says he.

At his stall of blue pitchers on the Via Dolorosa,
he's sweeping. The rubbed stones
feel holy. Dusting of powdered sugar
across faces of date-stuffed mamool.

This morning we lit the...Read more of this...

The Fury Of Beautiful Bones

by Anne Sexton
 Sing me a thrush, bone. 
Sing me a nest of cup and pestle. 
Sing me a sweetbread fr an old grandfather. 
Sing me a foot and a doorknob, for you are my love. 
Oh sing, bone bag man, sing. 
Your head is what I remember that Augusty 
you were in love with another woman but 
taht didn't matter. I...Read more of this...

Ape

by Russell Edson
 You haven't finished your ape, said mother to father, 
who had monkey hair and blood on his whiskers.

 I've had enough monkey, cried father.

 You didn't eat the hands, and I went to all the 
trouble to make onion rings for its fingers, said mother.

 I'll just nibble on its forehead, and then I've had enough, 
said father.

 I...Read more of this...

Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage...Read more of this...

The Fury Of Cooks

by Anne Sexton
 Herbs, garlic, 
cheese, please let me in! 
Souffles, salad, 
Parker House rolls, 
please let me in! 
Cook Helen, 
why are you so cross, 
why is your kitchen verboten? 
Couldn't you just teach me 
to bake a potato, 
to bake a potato, 
that charm, 
that young prince? 
No! No! 
This is my county! 
You shout silently. 
Couldn't you just show...Read more of this...

Eating Alone

by Li-Young Lee
 I've pulled the last of the year's young onions. 
The garden is bare now. The ground is cold, 
brown and old. What is left of the day flames 
in the maples at the corner of my 
eye. I turn, a cardinal vanishes. 
By the cellar door, I wash the onions, 
then drink from the icy metal spigot. 

Once, years...Read more of this...

Banquet Night

by Rudyard Kipling
 "ONCE in so often," King Solomon said,
 Watching his quarrymen drill the stone,
"We will curb our garlic and wine and bread
 And banquet together beneath my Throne,
And all Brethren shall come to that mess
As Fellow-Craftsmen-no more and no less."

"Send a swift shallop to Hiram of Tyre,
 Felling and floating our beautiful trees,
Say that the Brethren and I desire
 Talk...Read more of this...

Ode To Conger Chowder

by Pablo Neruda
 In the storm-tossed
Chilean
sea
lives the rosy conger,
giant eel
of snowy flesh.
And in Chilean
stewpots,
along the coast,
was born the chowder,
thick and succulent,
a boon to man.
You bring the conger, skinned,
to the kitchen
(its mottled skin slips off
like a glove,
leaving the
grape of the sea
exposed to the world),
naked,
the tender eel
glistens,
prepared
to serve our appetites.
Now
you take
garlic,
first, caress
that precious
ivory,
smell
its irate fragrance,
then
blend the minced garlic
with onion
and tomato
until the onion
is the color...Read more of this...

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