Famous Harpoons Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Amateur Rider

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Him goin' to ride for us! Him -- with the pants and the eyeglass and all. 
Amateur! don't he just look it -- it's twenty to one on a fall. 
Boss must be gone off his head to be sending out steeplechase crack 
Out over fences like these with an object like that on his back. 
Ride! Don't tell...Read more of this...

Reading Moby-Dick at 30000 Feet

by Tony Hoagland
 At this height, Kansas
is just a concept,
a checkerboard design of wheat and corn

no larger than the foldout section
of my neighbor's travel magazine.
At this stage of the journey

I would estimate the distance
between myself and my own feelings
is roughly the same as the mileage

from Seattle to New York,
so I can lean back into the upholstered interval
between Muzak and lunch,

a little bored,...Read more of this...

The Famous Tay Whale

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'TWAS in the month of December, and in the year l883,
That a monster whale came to Dundee,
Resolved for a few days to sport and play,
And devour the small fishes in the silvery Tay. 

So the monster whale did sport and play
Among the innocent little fishes in the beautiful Tay,
Until he was seen by some men one day,
And they resolved...Read more of this...

Daffy Duck In Hollywood

by John Ashbery
 Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue...Read more of this...

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