Famous Greenhouse Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Nostalgia

by Billy Collins
 Remember the 1340's? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was...Read more of this...

The Saginaw Song

by Theodore Roethke
 In Saginaw, in Saginaw,
 The wind blows up your feet,
When the ladies' guild puts on a feed,
 There's beans on every plate,
And if you eat more than you should,
 Destruction is complete.

Out Hemlock Way there is a stream
 That some have called Swan Creek;
The turtles have bloodsucker sores,
 And mossy filthy feet;
The bottoms of migrating ducks
 Come off it...Read more of this...

The Time Around Scars

by Michael Ondaatje
 A girl whom I've not spoken to
or shared coffee with for several years
writes of an old scar.
On her wrist it sleeps, smooth and white,
the size of a leech.
I gave it to her 
brandishing a new Italian penknife.
Look, I said turning,
and blood spat onto her shirt.

My wife has scars like spread raindrops 
on knees and ankles,
she talks of broken greenhouse...Read more of this...

Night Opens to the Storm

by Judith Skillman
 Poem by Anne-Marie Derése, translated by Judith Skillman.

Night opens to the storm,
a mauve coupling,
swollen. 
The sky, laden
like a merchant ship,
throws off its anchor.
Danger, heavier
each instant,
exudes the mugginess
of a greenhouse. 

Shimmering like mercury
The Valley of the Seven Muses
breathes mist
through its gray nostrils. 

The valley of has rejoined the night,
two humid females
the storm penetrates. 

And I, standing here
in the anxious wind,
I...Read more of this...

Samuel Gardner

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I who kept the greenhouse,
Lover of trees and flowers,
Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm,
Measuring its generous branches with my eye,
And listened to its rejoicing leaves
Lovingly patting each other
With sweet aeolian whispers.
And well they might:
For the roots had grown so wide and deep
That the soil of the hill could not withhold
Aught of its virtue, enriched by rain,
And warmed by...Read more of this...

We Aint Got No Money Honey But We Got Rain

by Charles Bukowski
 call it the greenhouse effect or whatever
but it just doesn't rain like it used to.
I particularly remember the rains of the 
depression era.
there wasn't any money but there was
plenty of rain.
it wouldn't rain for just a night or
a day,
it would RAIN for 7 days and 7
nights
and in Los Angeles the storm drains
weren't built to carry off taht much
water
and the...Read more of this...

Elegy: Walking the Line

by Edgar Bowers
 Every month or so, Sundays, we walked the line,
The limit and the boundary. Past the sweet gum
Superb above the cabin, along the wall—
Stones gathered from the level field nearby
When first we cleared it. (Angry bumblebees
Stung the two mules. They kicked. Thirteen, I ran.)
And then the field: thread-leaf maple, deciduous
Magnolia, hybrid broom, and, further down,
In light shade, one Franklinia Alatamaha
In...Read more of this...

Macavity: The Mystery Cat

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw--
For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime--Macavity's not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there's no on like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir...Read more of this...

Cripples And Other Stories

by Anne Sexton
 My doctor, the comedian
I called you every time
and made you laugh yourself
when I wrote this silly rhyme...


 Each time I give lectures
 or gather in the grants
 you send me off to boarding school
 in training pants.

God damn it, father-doctor,
I'm really thirty-six.
I see dead rats in the toilet.
I'm one of the lunatics.

Disgusted, mother put me
on the potty. She was...Read more of this...

A Winter Daybreak Above Vence

by James Wright
 The night's drifts
Pile up below me and behind my back,
Slide down the hill, rise again, and build
Eerie little dunes on the roof of the house.
In the valley below me,
Miles between me and the town of St.-Jeannet,
The road lamps glow.
They are so cold, they might as well be dark.
Trucks and cars
Cough and drone down there between the golden
Coffins of greenhouses,...Read more of this...

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