Famous Indiana Poems by Famous Poets

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

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White

by Charles Simic
 A New Version: 1980

 What is that little black thing I see there
 in the white?
 Walt Whitman


One

Out of poverty
To begin again: 

With the color of the bride
And that of blindness,

Touch what I can
Of the quick,

Speak and then wait,
As if this light

Will continue to linger
On the threshold.



All that is near,
I no longer give it a name.

Once a stone hard...Read more of this...

From Paumanok Starting

by Walt Whitman
 FROM Paumanock starting, I fly like a bird, 
Around and around to soar, to sing the idea of all; 
To the north betaking myself, to sing there arctic songs, 
To Kanada, till I absorb Kanada in myself—to Michigan then, 
To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing their songs, (they are inimitable;)
Then to Ohio and Indiana to sing theirs—to Missouri and...Read more of this...

Haze

by Carl Sandburg
 KEEP a red heart of memories
Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky,
Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.
Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;
All starlights of cool memories on storm paths.

Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.
They speak to me. I can not tell you what they say.

Other faces rise on the...Read more of this...

Thoughts

by Walt Whitman
 1
OF these years I sing, 
How they pass and have pass’d, through convuls’d pains as through parturitions; 
How America illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the sure fulfillment, the
 Absolute
 Success, despite of people—Illustrates evil as well as good; 
How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience,
 compulsion, and
 to infidelity; 
How few see the...Read more of this...

1861

by Walt Whitman
 AARM’D year! year of the struggle! 
No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year! 
Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisping cadenzas piano; 
But as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing, carrying a rifle on your
 shoulder, 
With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands—with a knife in the...Read more of this...

Mamie

by Carl Sandburg
 MAMIE beat her head against the bars of a little Indiana
town and dreamed of romance and big things off
somewhere the way the railroad trains all ran.
She could see the smoke of the engines get lost down
where the streaks of steel flashed in the sun and
when the newspapers came in on the morning mail
she knew there was a big Chicago...Read more of this...

The Mayor of Gary

by Carl Sandburg
 I ASKED the Mayor of Gary about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week.
And the Mayor of Gary answered more workmen steal time on the job in Gary than any other place in the United States.
“Go into the plants and you will see men sitting around doing nothing—machinery does everything,” said the Mayor of Gary when I asked him...Read more of this...

elusive wisdom

by Rg Gregory
 thoth (who became hermes who became mercury)
who was both moon and wisdom to the egyptians
manifested himself mainly as an ibis - a watery bird
a restless creature that could not stop searching
through marshy ground with its sickle-shaped beak

so to the christians the bird became a scavenger
the worst sinner from whom sins sprout forth and grow
sacred ibises have had to learn...Read more of this...

The Proud Farmer

by Vachel Lindsay
 [In memory of E. S. Frazee, Rush County, Indiana]


Into the acres of the newborn state 
He poured his strength, and plowed his ancient name, 
And, when the traders followed him, he stood 
Towering above their furtive souls and tame. 

That brow without a stain, that fearless eye 
Oft left the passing stranger wondering 
To find such knighthood in the...Read more of this...

Caboose Thoughts

by Carl Sandburg
 IT’S going to come out all right—do you know?
The sun, the birds, the grass—they know.
They get along—and we’ll get along.

Some days will be rainy and you will sit waiting
And the letter you wait for won’t come,
And I will sit watching the sky tear off gray and gray
And the letter I wait for won’t come.

There will be ac-ci-dents.
I know ac-ci-dents...Read more of this...

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