Famous Illinois Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Illinois poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous illinois poems. These examples illustrate what a famous illinois poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Whitman, Walt
...anhattan I saw you, as one of the workmen, the dwellers in Manhattan;
Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and Indiana,
Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait, and descending the Alleghanies;
Or down from the great lakes, or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along the Ohio river;
Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at Chattanooga on the mountain
top,
Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs, clothed in blue, bearing weapons, r...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
....)
13
Under Thee only they harvest—even but a wisp of hay, under thy great face, only;
Harvest the wheat of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin—every barbed spear, under thee;
Harvest the maize of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee—each ear in its light-green
sheath,
Gather the hay to its myriad mows, in the odorous, tranquil barns,
Oats to their bins—the white potato, the buckwheat of Michigan, to theirs;
Gather the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama—dig and hoard the golden, the ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ourt, or indoor library;
But an odor I’d bring to-day as from forests of pine in the north, in Maine—or
breath
of an Illinois prairie,
With open airs of Virginia, or Georgia, or Tennessee—or from Texas uplands, or
Florida’s glades,
With presentment of Yellowstone’s scenes, or Yosemite;
And murmuring under, pervading all, I’d bring the rustling sea-sound,
That endlessly sounds from the two great seas of the world.
And for thy subtler sense, subtler refrains, O Uni...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...ntic.
A fog there from Iceland will be a murmur in gray over me and a long deep wind sob always.
Bury me in an Illinois cornfield.
The blizzards loosen their pipe organ voluntaries in winter stubble and the spring rains and the fall rains bring letters from the sea....Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...to sleep outdoors when May comes.
Buy me
something useless to remember you by.
Send me
a sumach leaf from an Illinois hill.
In the faces marching in the firelog flickers,
In the fire music of wood singing to winter,
Make my face march through the purple and ashes.
Make me one of the fire singers to winter....Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
..., washed sink, dishes my
studio guest a week in Budapest"
Thousands of readers, "Howl changed my life in Libertyville Illinois"
"I saw him read Montclair State Teachers College decided be a poet-- "
"He turned me on, I started with garage rock sang my songs in Kansas
City"
"Kaddish made me weep for myself & father alive in Nevada City"
"Father Death comforted me when my sister died Boston l982"
"I read what he said in a newsmagazine, blew my mind, realized
others like m...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...I DRANK musty ale at the Illinois Athletic Club with
the millionaire manufacturer of Green River butter
one night
And his face had the shining light of an old-time Quaker,
he spoke of a beautiful daughter, and I knew he had
a peace and a happiness up his sleeve somewhere.
Then I heard Jim Kirch make a speech to the Advertising
Association on the trade resources of South America....Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
..., there in Menard."
As a last attempt I turned to a guard and said:
"Please say it's old Aunt Hannah Armstrong
From Illinois, come to see him about her sick boy
In the army."
Well, just in a moment they let me in!
And when he saw me he broke in a laugh,
And dropped his business as president,
And wrote in his own hand Doug's discharge,
Talking the while of the early days,
And telling stories....Read more of this...
by
Dorn, Edward
...es would not
fancy their faces turned from the highway.
Oh perish the thought
I was thinking in that moment
Newman Illinois
the Saturday night dance--
what a life? Would I like it again?
No. Once I returned late summer
from California thin from journeying
and the girls were not the same.
You'll say that's natural
they had been dancing all the time....Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...ing to thaw out a little
And the Donets gurgles beneath the
Huge blocks of ice. The Manzanares gushes free.
The Illinois darts through the sunny air again.
But the Dnieper is still ice-bound. Somewhere
The Salado propels irs floes, but the Roosevelt's
Frozen. The Oka is frozen solider
Than the Somme. The Minho slumbers
In winter, nor does the Snake
Remember August. Hilarious, the Canadian
Is solid ice. The Madeira slavers
Across the thawing fie...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...ng her at last in Virginia,
Two children dead in the meanwhile.
We went by oxen to Tennessee,
Thence after years to Illinois,
At last to Spoon River.
We cut the buffalo grass,
We felled the forests,
We built the school houses, built the bridges,
Leveled the roads and tilled the fields
Alone with poverty, scourges, death-
If Harry Wilmans who fought the Filipinos
Is to have a flag on his grave
Take it from mine!...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...ess
darkness with no more perfume than
cellophane. "Our souls are mingling
now somewhere in the open spaces
between Illinois and you," she writes.
When I read the letter, two weeks
from now, forwarded by my publisher,
I will suddenly discover a truth
of our lives on earth, and I'll bless
Mrs. William Settle of Lake Forest
for giving me more than I gave
her, for addressing me as Mr. Levine,
the name my father bore, a name
a man could take with courage
and pride...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...ntemplation, thoughts of temple work to be done
in Salt Lake, dead relatives to be discovered among ancient
papers in Illinois and Germany. Then more temple work to
be done in Salt Lake.
The Mormon woman told us that when she had been mar-
ried in the temple at Salt Lake, a mosquito had bitten her on
the wrist just before the ceremony and her wrist had swollen
up and become huge and just awful. It could've been seen
through the lace by a blindman. She...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...sun seen through a mist.
Or I will remember the witchery in the eyes of a girl at a barn dance one winter night in Illinois saying: Put off the wedding five times and nobody comes to it....Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...If the learned Supreme Court of Illinois
Got at the secret of every case
As well as it does a case of rape
It would be the greatest court in the world.
A jury, of neighbors mostly, with "Butch" Weldy
As foreman, found me guilty in ten minutes
And two ballots on a case like this:
Richard Bandle and I had trouble over a fence,
And my wife and Mrs. Bandle quarreled
As to whether Ipava...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...western shore the
same;
And all between those shores, and my ever running Mississippi, with bends and chutes;
And my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields of Missouri;
The CONTINENT—devoting the whole identity, without reserving an atom,
Pour in! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all, and the yield of all.
BANNER AND PENNANT.
Aye all! for ever, for all!
From sea to sea, north and south, east and west,
(The war is completed, the price is p...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...
Chants of the prairies;
Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to the Mexican sea;
Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota;
Chants going forth from the centre, from Kansas, and thence, equi-distant,
Shooting in pulses of fire, ceaseless, to vivify all.
4In the Year 80 of The States,
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here, from parents the same, and their parents the
same...Read more of this...
by
Lindsay, Vachel
...I saw wild domes and bowers
And smoking incense towers
And mad exotic flowers
In Illinois.
Where ragged ditches ran
Now springs of Heaven began
Celestial drink for man
In Illinois.
There stood beside the town
Beneath its incense-crown
An angel and a clown
In Illinois.
He was as Clowns are:
She was snow and star
With eyes that looked afar
In Illinois.
I asked, "How came this place
Of antique Asian grace
Am...Read more of this...
by
Lindsay, Vachel
...And must the Senator from Illinois
Be this squat thing, with blinking, half-closed eyes?
This brazen gutter idol, reared to power
Upon a leering pyramid of lies?
And must the Senator from Illinois
Be the world's proverb of successful shame,
Dazzling all State house flies that steal and steal,
Who, when the sad State spares them, count it fame?
If once or twice within his ne...Read more of this...
by
Simic, Charles
...Take care of your snow-sheep.
to A.S. Hamilton
Then all's well and white,
And no more than white.
Illinois snowbound.
Indiana with one bare tree.
Michigan a storm-cloud.
Wisconsin empty of men.
There's a trap on the ice
Laid there centuries ago.
The bait is still fresh.
The metal glitters as the night descends.
Woe, woe, it sings from the bough.
Our Lady, etc...
You had me hoodwinked.
I see your bran...Read more of this...
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