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Famous Gary Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Snyder, Gary
...One afternoon the last week in April
Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet
One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.
He recalls the hatchet-head
Without a handle, in the shop
And go gets it, and wants it for his own.
A broken-off axe handle behind the door
Is long enough for a hatchet,
We cut it to length and take it
With the hatchet head
And working ha...Read more of this...



by Snyder, Gary
...You said, that October,
In the tall dry grass by the orchard
When you chose to be free,
"Again someday, maybe ten years."

After college I saw you
One time. You were strange,
And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have
Gone by: I've always known
 where you were—
I might have gone to you
Hoping to win your love back.
You sti...Read more of this...

by Snyder, Gary
...Snowfall in March:
I sit in the white glow reading a thesis
About you. Your poems, your life.

The author's my student,
He even quotes me.

Forty years since we joked in a kitchen in Portland
Twenty since you disappeared.

All those years and their moments—
Crackling bacon, slamming car doors,
Poems tried out on friends,
Will be one more ar...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...he glass wall high 
over Lake Shore Drive, the cars 
below fanning into the city. 
East she can see all the way 
to Gary and the great gray clouds 
of exhaustion rolling over 
the lake where her vision ends. 
This is where her brother lives. 
At such height there's nothing, 
no birds, no growing, no noise. 
She leans her sweating forehead 
against the cold glass, shudders, 
and puts down the receiver.

THE GARDEN

Wherever she turns her garden 
is alive an...Read more of this...

by Snyder, Gary
...Lew Welch just turned up one day,
live as you and me. "Damn, Lew" I said,
"you didn't shoot yourself after all."
"Yes I did" he said,
and even then I felt the tingling down my back.
"Yes you did, too" I said—"I can feel it now."
"Yeah" he said,
"There's a basic fear between your world and
mine. I don't know why.
What I came to say w...Read more of this...



by Soto, Gary
...The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At he...Read more of this...

by Snyder, Gary
...Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
 placed solid, by hands
In coice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
 in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
 riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
 straying planets,
These poems, people,
 lost ponies with
Dragging saddles--
 and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
...Read more of this...

by Soto, Gary
...I was hoping to be happy by seventeen.
School was a sharp check mark in the roll book,
An obnoxious tuba playing at noon because our team
Was going to win at night. The teachers were
Too close to dying to understand. The hallways
Stank of poor grades and unwashed hair. Thus,
A friend and I sat watching the water on Saturday,
Neither of us t...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...gear in the sky;
And always dark in the heart and through it,
 Smoke and the blood of a man.
Pittsburg, Youngstown, Gary—they make their steel with men.

In the blood of men and the ink of chimneys
The smoke nights write their oaths:
Smoke into steel and blood into steel;
Homestead, Braddock, Birmingham, they make their steel with men.
Smoke and blood is the mix of steel.

 The birdmen drone
 in the blue; it is steel
 a motor sings and zooms.

Steel barb-w...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...All the way 
on the road to Gary 
he could see 
where the sky shone 
just out of reach 
and smell the rich 
smell of work 
as strong as money, 
but when he got there 
the night was over. 

People were going 
to work and back, 
the sidewalks were lakes 
no one walked on, 
the diners were saying 
time to eat 
so he stopped 
and talked to a woman 
who'd been up late 
making helmets.Read more of this...

by Fincke, Gary
...
Let them have mercy on themselves.  Let my children,
Grown now, be repairing my faults with forgiveness.

© Gary Fincke...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...I ASKED the Mayor of Gary about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week.
And the Mayor of Gary answered more workmen steal time on the job in Gary than any other place in the United States.
“Go into the plants and you will see men sitting around doing nothing—machinery does everything,” said the Mayor of Gary when I asked him about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week.
And ...Read more of this...

by Snyder, Gary
...There are those who love to get dirty
 and fix things.
They drink coffee at dawn,
 beer after work,

And those who stay clean,
 just appreciate things,
At breakfast they have milk
 and juice at night.

There are those who do both,
 they drink tea....Read more of this...

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