Famous Georgia Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Motherhood

by Georgia Douglas Johnson
                                                           ...Read more of this...

Longings for Home

by Walt Whitman
 O MAGNET-SOUTH! O glistening, perfumed South! My South! 
O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me! 
O dear to me my birth-things—All moving things, and the trees where I was
 born—the
 grains,
 plants, rivers; 
Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant, over flats of silvery
 sands,
...Read more of this...

Fog

by Amy Clampitt
 A vagueness comes over everything,
as though proving color and contour
alike dispensable: the lighthouse
extinct, the islands' spruce-tips
drunk up like milk in the
universal emulsion; houses
reverting into the lost
and forgotten; granite
subsumed, a rumor
in a mumble of ocean.
 Tactile
definition, however, has not been
totally banished: hanging
tassel by tassel, panicled
foxtail and needlegrass,
dropseed, furred hawkweed,
and last season's rose-hips
are vested in silenced
chimes of the finest,
clearest sea-crystal.
 Opacity
opens...Read more of this...

A Portrait in Georgia

by Jean Toomer
 Hair-braided chestnut,
coiled like a lyncher's rope,
Eyes-fagots,
Lips-old scars, or the first red blisters,
Breath-the last sweet scent of cane,
And her slim body, white as the ash
of black flesh after flame....Read more of this...

Salts And Oils

by Philip Levine
 In Havana in 1948 I ate fried dog
believing it was Peking duck. Later,
in Tampa I bunked with an insane sailor
who kept a .38 Smith and Wesson in his shorts.
In the same room were twins, oilers
from Toledo, who argued for hours
each night whose turn it was
to get breakfast and should he turn
the eggs or not. On the way north
I lived...Read more of this...

Georgia Dusk

by Jean Toomer
 The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
 The setting sun, too indolent to hold
 A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,
Passively darkens for night's barbecue, 

A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,
 An orgy for some genius of the South
 With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,
Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.

The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop,
...Read more of this...

Go Down Death

by James Weldon Johnson
 Weep not, weep not,
She is not dead;
She's resting in the bosom of Jesus.
Heart-broken husband--weep no more;
Grief-stricken son--weep no more;
Left-lonesome daughter --weep no more;
She only just gone home.

Day before yesterday morning,
God was looking down from his great, high heaven,
Looking down on all his children,
And his eye fell of Sister Caroline,
Tossing on her bed of pain.
And God's big heart was touched...Read more of this...

From Paumanok Starting

by Walt Whitman
 FROM Paumanock starting, I fly like a bird, 
Around and around to soar, to sing the idea of all; 
To the north betaking myself, to sing there arctic songs, 
To Kanada, till I absorb Kanada in myself—to Michigan then, 
To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing their songs, (they are inimitable;)
Then to Ohio and Indiana to sing theirs—to Missouri and...Read more of this...

Portrait in Georgia

by Jean Toomer
 Hair--braided chestnut,
coiled like a lyncher's rope,
Eyes--fagots,
Lips--old scars, or the first red blisters,
Breath--the last sweet scent of cane,
And her slim body, white as the ash
of black flesh after flame....Read more of this...

O Sing Fair Lady When With Me

by Alexander Pushkin
O sing, fair lady, when with me
Sad songs of Georgia no more:
They bring into my memory
Another life, a distant shore.

Your beautiful, your cruel tune
Brings to my memory, alas,
The steppe, the night - and with the moon
Lines of a far, unhappy lass.

Forgetting at the sight of you
That shadow fateful, shadow dear,
I hear you singing - and anew
I picture it before me,...Read more of this...

A Carol of Harvest for 1867

by Walt Whitman
 1
A SONG of the good green grass! 
A song no more of the city streets; 
A song of farms—a song of the soil of fields. 

A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork; 
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk’d maize.

2
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for...Read more of this...

As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free

by Walt Whitman
 1
AS a strong bird on pinions free, 
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving, 
Such be the thought I’d think to-day of thee, America, 
Such be the recitative I’d bring to-day for thee. 

The conceits of the poets of other lands I bring thee not,
Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long, 
Nor rhyme—nor the classics—nor perfume of...Read more of this...

American Feuillage

by Walt Whitman
 AMERICA always! 
Always our own feuillage! 
Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the
 cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas! 
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New
 Mexico!
 Always soft-breath’d Cuba! 
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes
 drain’d
 by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the...Read more of this...

O Daedalus Fly Away Home

by Robert Hayden
 (For Maia and Julie) 

Drifting night in the Georgia pines, 
coonskin drum and jubilee banjo. 
Pretty Malinda, dance with me. 

Night is juba, night is congo. 
Pretty Malinda, dance with me. 

Night is an African juju man 
weaving a wish and a weariness together 
to make two wings. 

O fly away home fly away 

Do you remember Africa? 

O...Read more of this...

From The Flats

by Sidney Lanier
 What heartache -- ne'er a hill!
Inexorable, vapid, vague and chill
The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low.
With one poor word they tell me all they know;
Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain,
Do drawl it o'er again and o'er again.
They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name:
Always the same, the same.

Nature hath no surprise,
No ambuscade of beauty 'gainst mine...Read more of this...

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