Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Hip Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Masefield, John
...apping grimly at the fore, 
And we sailed the Spanish Water in the happy days of yore. 

We'd a long brass gun amidships, like a well-conducted ship, 
We had each a brace of pistols and a cutlass at the hip; 
It's a point which tells against us, and a fact to be deplored, 
But we chased the goodly merchant-men and laid their ships aboard. 

Then the dead men fouled the scuppers and the wounded filled the chains, 
And the paint-work all was spatter dashed with other pe...Read more of this...



by Clampitt, Amy
...he Hudson
at the foot of Twelfth Street
might be a thing that's 
done with mirrors: definition

by deracination—grunge,
hip-hop, Chinese takeout,
co-ops—while the globe's
elixir caters, year by year,
to the resurgence of this
climbing tentpole, frilled and stippled

yet again with bloom
to greet the solstice:
What year was it it over-
took the fire escape? The
roof's its next objective.
Will posterity (if there 

is any)pause to regret
such layerings of shade,
their caden...Read more of this...

by Clampitt, Amy
...nfinitesimal
fault line
a limitless
interiority

beyond the woven
unicorn the maiden
(man-carved worm-eaten)
God at her hip
incipient
the untransfigured
cottontail
bluebell and primrose
growing wild a strawberry
chagrin night terrors
past the earthlit
unearthly masquerade

(we shall be changed)

a silence opens

 *

the larval feeder
naked hairy ravenous
inventing from within
itself its own
raw stuffs'
hooked silk-hung
relinquishment

behind the mask
the milkfat shivering
sin...Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...ltz,
Then in middle shaft, like a duchess daft,
It changes its mind and halts.
The bum bites lip as the landlocked ship
Doth neither fall nor rise,
But Maxie the elevator boy
Regards him with burning eyes.
"First, to explore the thirteenth floor,"
Says Maxie, "would be wise."

Quoth the bum, "There is moss on your double cross,
I have been this way before,
I have cased the joint at every point,
And there is no thirteenth floor.
The architect he skipped direct
...Read more of this...

by Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)
...sweet deer
the red rare deer. 

Four red roebuck at a white water
the cruel bugle sang before. 

Horn at hip went my love riding
riding the echo down
into the silver dawn. 

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the level meadows ran before. 

Softer be they than slippered sleep
the lean lithe deer
the fleet flown deer. 

Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrow sang before. 

Bow at belt went my love riding
riding ...Read more of this...



by Graves, Robert
...r h's and her s's, 
His p's and w's.

Though few would still subscribe
To the monogamic axiom
That strife below the hip-bones
Need not estrange the heart,
Call it a good marriage:
More drew those two together,
Despite a lack of children,
Than pulled them apart.

Call it a good marriage:
They never fought in public,
They acted circumspectly
And faced the world with pride;
Thus the hazards of their love-bed
Were none of our damned business - 
Till as jurymen we sat on 
...Read more of this...

by Thayer, Ernest Lawrence
...nd tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt. 

Then, while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip, 
defiance flashed in Casey's eye, a sneer curled Casey's lip. 

And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air, 
and Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there. 

Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped -- 
"That ain't my style," said Casey. 

"Strike one!" the umpire said. 
From the benche...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...proper twinkle in your eye-- 
'Tell you, I liked your looks at very first. 
Let's sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch. 
Here's spring come, and the nights one makes up bands 
To roam the town and sing out carnival, 
And I've been three weeks shut within my mew, 
A-painting for the great man, saints and saints 
And saints again. I could not paint all night-- 
Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air. 
There came a hurry of feet and little feet, 
A ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...a well-made man appears not only in his face; 
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists;

It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees—dress does
 not hide him; 
The strong, sweet, supple quality he has, strikes through the cotton and flannel;
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more; 
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side. 

The sprawl an...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...d as well.

Reaped are those fields with dragon's-teeth so lately sown;
Many the heaped men dying there - so close, hip touches thigh; yet each man dies alone.
Music, what overtone
For the soft ultimate sigh or the unheeded groan
Hast thou—to make death decent, where men slip
Down blood to death, no service of grieved heart or ritual lip
Transferring what was recently a man and still is warm—
Transferring his obedient limbs into the shallow grave where not again a fri...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...the ancient poet.
Let the wine pitcher
add to the kiss of love its own.

My darling, suddenly
the line of your hip
becomes the brimming curve
of the wine goblet,
your breast is the grape cluster,
your nipples are the grapes,
the gleam of spirits lights your hair,
and your navel is a chaste seal
stamped on the vessel of your belly,
your love an inexhaustible
cascade of wine,
light that illuminates my senses,
the earthly splendor of life.

But you are more than lov...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...the ancient poet.
Let the wine pitcher
add to the kiss of love its own.

My darling, suddenly
the line of your hip
becomes the brimming curve
of the wine goblet,
your breast is the grape cluster,
your nipples are the grapes,
the gleam of spirits lights your hair,
and your navel is a chaste seal
stamped on the vessel of your belly,
your love an inexhaustible
cascade of wine,
light that illuminates my senses,
the earthly splendor of life.

But you are more than lov...Read more of this...

by Levy, D A
...u think i am?"
A Ritz Cracker? A flying bathtub?
An arab?                      etc.

But now its getting pretty hip
to be a jew
and some of my best friend are
becoming converted to halavah,
even the crones who suddenly
became World War 2 catholics are
now praising bagels & lox
i still dont feel on ethnic things like

"Ok, we all niggers so lets hold hands."
&
"OK, we're all wops so lets support the
mafia,"
&
"Ok, we're all jews so lets weep on each
...Read more of this...

by Wyatt, Sir Thomas
...) 
At the threshold her silly foot did trip, 
And ere she might recover it again 
The traitor cat had caught her by the hip 
And made her there against her will remain 
That had forgotten her poor surety, and rest, 
For seeming wealth wherein she thought to reign. 
Alas, my Poynz, how men do seek the best [a friend of Wyatt] 
And find the worst, by error as they stray. 
And no marvel, when sight is so opprest 
And blind the guide. Anon out of the way 
Goeth guide ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...s, 
The night pervades them and infolds them.

The married couple sleep calmly in their bed—he with his palm on the hip of the wife,
 and
 she
 with her palm on the hip of the husband, 
The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their bed, 
The men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs, 
And the mother sleeps, with her little child carefully wrapt. 

The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep,
The prisoner sleeps well in the prison—the run-away son sleeps; 
The murd...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...valved voice. 

I mind how once we lay, such a transparent summer morning; 
How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turn’d over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my
 bare-stript heart, 
And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet.


Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the
 argument of the earth; 
And I know that the hand of God is the prom...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...orm!

A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze!

How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of your railroad and your flower soul?

Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old loc...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...reed in those long hushed phone calls
that when the moment comes
we'll talk turkey,
we'll shoot words straight from the hip,
we'll play it as it lays.
Yes,
when death comes with its hood
we won't be polite.



6. BABY

Death,
you lie in my arms like a cherub,
as heavy as bread dough.
Your milky wings are as still as plastic.
Hair soft as music.
Hair the color of a harp.
And eyes made of glass,
as brittle as crystal.
Each time I rock you
I think...Read more of this...

by Ayres, Pam
...ughts on immigration, teenage mothers, Tony Blair,
The future of the monarchy, house prices in the south
The wait for hip replacements, BSE and foot and mouth.

Yes . . . they should have asked my husband he can sort out any mess
He can rejuvenate the railways he can cure the NHS
So any little niggle, anything you want to know
Just run it past my husband, wind him up and let him go.

Congestion on the motorways, free holidays for thugs
The damage to the ozone layer,...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...r> 

Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing, 
Where I may feel the throbs of your heart, or rest upon your hip, 
Carry me when you go forth over land or sea; 
For thus, merely touching you, is enough—is best,
And thus, touching you, would I silently sleep and be carried eternally. 

But these leaves conning, you con at peril, 
For these leaves, and me, you will not understand, 
They will elude you at first, and still more afterward—I will certainly elude you,...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Hip poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs