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Famous Great Lakes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...of Illinois and Indiana, 
Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait, and descending the Alleghanies;
Or down from the great lakes, or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along the Ohio river; 
Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at Chattanooga on the mountain
 top, 
Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs, clothed in blue, bearing weapons, robust
 year; 
Heard your determin’d voice, launch’d forth again and again; 
Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt



...comrades.

2
I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the
 shores
 of
 the great lakes, and all over the prairies; 
I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other’s necks; 
 By the love of comrades, 
 By the manly love of comrades. 

3
For you these, from me, O Democracy, to serve you, ma femme!
For you! for you, I am trilling these songs, 
 In the love of comrades, 
 In the high-towering love of comrades....Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...ations
As of thunder in the mountains?
I should answer, I should tell you,
"From the forests and the prairies,
From the great lakes of the Northland,
From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes.
I repeat them as I heard them
From the lips of Nawadaha,
The musician, the sweet singer."
Should you ask where Nawadaha
Found these songs so wild and wayward...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...and the German is sure, and the Spaniard is sure, and
 the
 island
 Cuban is sure; 
The engineer, the deck-hand on the great lakes, or on the Mississippi, or St. Lawrence, or
 Sacramento, or Hudson, or Paumanok Sound, claims him. 

The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood;
The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see themselves in the ways of
 him—he strangely transmutes them, 
They are not vile any more—they hardly know themselves, th...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my 
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas 
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my 
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your 
sun rising swiftly from the right my 
sun rising swiftly from the left your 
moon rising slowly form the left my 
moon rising slowly form the right unti...Read more of this...
by Olds, Sharon



...ents
clutching them like lovers horizontal
Chicago's Loop becomes a rollercoaster
Skyscrapers filled like water glasses
Great Lakes mixed with Buddhist brine
Great Books watered down in Evanston
Milwaukee beer topped with sea foam
Beau Fleuve of Buffalo suddenly become salt
Manhatten Island swept clean in sixteen seconds
buried masts of Amsterdam arise
as the great wave sweeps on Eastward
to wash away over-age Camembert Europe
manhatta steaming in sea-vines
the washed land aw...Read more of this...
by Ferlinghetti, Lawrence

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things