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Famous Handshake Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Sandburg, Carl
...WRITE your wishes
 on the door
 and come in.

Stand outside
 in the pools of the harvest moon.

Bring in
 the handshake of the pumpkins.

There’s a wish
 for every hazel nut?
There’s a hope
 for every corn shock?
There’s a kiss
 for every clumsy climbing shadow?

Clover and the bumblebees once,
high winds and November rain now.

Buy shoes
 for rough weather in November.
Buy shirts
 to sleep outdoors when May comes.

 Buy me
something useless to remem...Read more of this...



by Tebb, Barry
...e stove, washing hung precisely

In the kitchen, a Sunday suit in the wardrobe.

An unwrinkling of smiles, the hard handshake

Of work-roughened hands.



One night he smashed up the tidy flat.

The TV screen was powder

The clock ticked on the neat lawn

‘Murder in Seacroft Hospital’

Emblazoned on the kitchen wall.



I went with you and your sister in her car to Roundhay Wing.

Your sister had to leave for work or sleep

You had to back to meet the chil...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...th a smoking gun and a gas mask—the workshop man under the smokestacks and the blueprints—these two are brothers of the handshake never forgotten—for these two we give the salt tears of our eyes, the salute of red roses, the flame-won scarlet of poppies.

For the soldier who gives all, for the workshop man who gives all, for these the red bar is on the flag—the red bar is the heart’s-blood of the mother who gave him, the land that gave him.

The gray foam and the grea...Read more of this...

by Raine, Kathleen
...e world-cave,
but Time the destroyer,
the liberator, the purifier?

The curse of Midas
has changed at a touch,
a golden handshake
earthly paradise
to lifeless matter,
where once was seed-time,
summer and winter,
food-chain, factory farming,
monocrops for supermarkets,
pesticides, weed-killers
birdless springs, 
endangered species,
battery-hens, hormone injections,
artificial insemination,
implants, transplants, sterilization,
surrogate births, contraception,
cloning, genetic ...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...iveter’s chatter, the police patrol, the song-whistle of the steamboat.

To a man across a thousand years I offer a handshake.
I say to him: Brother, make the story short, for the stretch of a thousand years is short.. . .
What brothers these in the dark?
What eaves of skyscrapers against a smoke moon?
These chimneys shaking on the lumber shanties
When the coal boats plow by on the river—
The hunched shoulders of the grain elevators—
The flame sprocket...Read more of this...



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Book: Reflection on the Important Things