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Famous Hank Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Service, Robert William
...ll;
But with asbestos bellows, if the devil will permit,
I'll swing you to the fork-tailed imps of Hell.

Yes, I'll hank you, and I'll spank you,
And I'll everlasting yank you
To the cinder-swinging satellites of Hell....Read more of this...



by Sandburg, Carl
...ent and it was your voice went, “Hai, hai, hai,”
Up where the rocks let nothing live and the grass was gone,
Not even a hank nor a wisp of sea moss hoping.
Here your feet and your same singing, “Hai, hai, hai.”

Was there anything else to answer than, “Hai, hai, hai,”?
Did I go up those same crags yesterday and the day before
Scruffing my shoe leather and scraping the tough gnomic stuff
Of stones woven on a cold criss-cross so long ago?
Have I not sat there … watching...Read more of this...

by Gluck, Louise
...jump on the
bed

I am so very sorry for
my wife

she will see this
stiff
white 
body
shake it once, then
maybe
again

"Hank!"

Hank won't
answer.

it's not my death that
worries me, it's my wife
left with this
pile of
nothing.

I want to
let her know 
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her

even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid

and the hard 
words
I ever feared to 
say 
can now be 
said:

I love
you....Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...t Jews, you pour these like cups of
coffee. 

The woman who took men as snakes take rabbits, a rag and a bone and a hank of
hair, she whose eyes called men to sea dreams and shark’s teeth … in a poem you
pour this like a cup of coffee, Kip. 

Marching to the footlights in night robes with spots of blood, marching in white
sheets muffling the faces, marching with heads in the air they come back and
cough and cry and sneer:… in your poems, men, you pour these like cups ...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Richard
...for Hank and Nancy

Seven thousand acres of grass have faded yellow
from his cough. These limp days, his anger,
legend forty years from moon to Stevensville,
lives on, just barely, in a Great Falls whore.
Cruel times, he cries, cruel winds. His geese roam
unattended in the meadow. The gold last leaves
of cottonwoods ride Burnt Fork creek away.Read more of this...



by Bukowski, Charles
...o one
"Betsy R.", so I went back and said,
"hey, Betsy, there are kids running around all over
this place."
"oh Hank, damn it, I'm sick. I want to sleep, not
rap."
"but look, the ..."
"make yourself some
coffee."
I put the pot on and the little boy ran up in his
pajamas. I found a shirt and some pants and some
shoes and
dressed him.
then I cleaned a bottle with hot water, filled it
with milk and gave it to the kid in the
crib. he we...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...s just an old rag doll.
But you should see her mother it,
 And with her kisses smother it.

A twist of twill, a hank of hair,
 Fit for the rubbish bin;
How Rosemary with scorn would stare
 At its pathetic grin!
Yet Marie Rose can lover it,
 And with her kisses cover it.

Rosemary is a pampered pet;
 She sniffs a dainty nose
Of scorn at ragged dolls, and yet
 My love's with Marie Rose,
In garret corner shy and sweet,
 With rag doll Marguerite.

Though kin they ...Read more of this...

by Haxton, Brooks
...> Sing. I was a scholar as a boy:
I cut the neck and arm holes into the burlap,
pulled it on, and cinched it with a hank of rope:
what I have done from then till now is itch....Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...Now Fireman Flynn met Hank the Finn where lights of Lust-land glow;
"Let's leave," says he, "the lousy sea, and give the land a show.
I'm fed up to the molar mark with wallopin' the brine;
I feel the bloody barnacles a-carkin' on me spine.
Let's hit the hard-boiled North a crack, where creeks are paved with gold."
"You count me in," says Hank the Finn. "Ay do as A...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...I'm not strong on the Dago in song, that sure got me goin' for fair.
There was Crusoe an' Scotty, an' Ma'am Shoeman Hank, an' Melber an' Bonchy was there.
'Twas silver an' gold, an' sweetness untold to hear all them big guinneys sing;
An' thick all around an' inhalin' the sound, them Indians formed in a ring.

So solemn they sat, an' they smoked an' they spat, but their eyes sort o' glistened an' shone;
Yet niver a word of approvin' occurred till that guy Harry La...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
..., want, and exile thou sustain
          Beneath the fickle gale;
     Waste not a sigh on fortune changed,
     On thankless courts, or friends estranged,
     But come where kindred worth shall smile,
     To greet thee in the lonely isle.'
     IV.

     As died the sounds upon the tide,
     The shallop reached the mainland side,
     And ere his onward way he took,
     The stranger cast a lingering look,
     Where easily his eye might reach
     The Harper...Read more of this...

by Murray, Les
...y. That's Style.
Sprawl is more like the thirteenth banana in a dozen
or anyway the fourteenth. 

Sprawl is Hank Stamper in Never Give an Inch
bisecting an obstructive official's desk with a chain saw.
Not harming the official. Sprawl is never brutal,
though it's often intransigent. Sprawl is never Simon de Montfort
at a town-storming: Kill them all! God will know His own.
Knowing the man's name this was said to might be sprawl. 

Sprawl occurs...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...A fool there was and he mad his prayer
 (Even as you and I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair
(We called her the woman who did not care),
But the fool he called her his lady fair
 (Even as you and I!)

Oh the years we waste and the tears we waste
 And the work of our head and hand,
Belong to the woman who did not know
(And now we know that she never could know)
 And did not understand.

A fool there was and his goods he spent
 (Even ...Read more of this...

by Cohen, Leonard
...ay 
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on 
I'm just paying my rent every day 
Oh in the Tower of Song 
I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get? 
Hank Williams hasn't answered yet 
But I hear him coughing all night long 
A hundred floors above me 
In the Tower of Song 
I was born like this, I had no choice 
I was born with the gift of a golden voice 
And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond 
They tied me to this table right here 
In the Tower of Song 
So yo...Read more of this...

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