Famous Junk Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Junk poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous junk poems. These examples illustrate what a famous junk poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Tebb, Barry
...rs like a Sunday School
A table of pamphlets looked over but not bought
A lacquered screen holding court, a century’s junk.
An ivory dial telephone, a bowl of early daffodils
To focus on.
I was the first to read, speaking of James Simmons’ death,
My anguish at the year long silence from his last letter
To the Christmas card in Gaelic Nollaig Shona -
With the message “Jimmy’s doing better than expected.”
The difficulty I had in finding his publisher’s ad...Read more of this...
by
Jong, Erica
...we plan, postponing, pushing our lives forward
into the future--as if, when the room
contains us and all our treasured junk
we will have filled whatever gap it is
that makes us wander, discontented
from ourselves.
The room will not change:
a rug, or armchair, or new coat of paint
won't make much difference;
our eyes are fickle
but we remain the same beneath our suntans,
pale, frightened,
dreaming ourselves backward and forward in time,
dreaming our dreaming selves.
...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...ao Tse-tung
Chiang Kai-shek's army ran away
They were waiting there in Thailand yesterday
Supported by the CIA
Pushing junk down Thailand way
First they stole from the Meo Tribes
Up in the hills they started taking bribes
Then they sent their soldiers up to Shan
Collecting opium to send to The Man
Pushing junk in Bangkok yesterday
Supported by the CIA
Brought their jam on mule trains down
To Chiang Rai that's a railroad town
Sold it next to the police chief brain
He took ...Read more of this...
by
Cohen, Leonard
...getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A....Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...ers of Kansas!
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop
apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana
hipsters peace & junk & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy
the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the
mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the
middle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebell-
ion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peo...Read more of this...
by
Dugan, Alan
...he thing
about the river. Then
a soldier on a log
went by. He seemed drunk
and we asked him Why
had he and this junk
come down to us so
from the past upstream.
''Friends,'' he said, ''the great
Battle of Granicus
has just been won
by all of the Greeks except
the Lacedaemonians and
myself: this is a joke
between me and a man
named Alexander, whom
all of you ba-bas
will hear of as a god.''...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...tcards of Atlantic
City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-
ings and migraines of China under junk-with-
drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the
railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,
leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing
through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-
father night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep-...Read more of this...
by
Doty, Mark
...ault of heaven.
An unbelievable mess,
so heaped and scattered
it seemed the core
of chaos itself--
but no, the junk was arranged
in rough aisles,
someone's intimate
clutter and collection,
no walls but still
a kind of apartment
and a fire ribboned out
of a ruined stove,
and white plates
were laid out
on the table beside it.
White china! Something
was moving, and
--you understand
it takes longer to tell this
than to see it, only
a train window's wo...Read more of this...
by
Butler, Ellis Parker
...l—
The hippo opened not at all,
Or, if it did, it was about
As thrilling as a teapot spout.
* * * * *
The Crimson Junk, by Doris Watt,
I’ve read it. Who, I pray, has not?
Bill Wastel, by C. Marrow. The
Plaid Cowslip. And The Hocking Lee.
The Fallow Field, by Sally Loo;
The Rose in Chains. I’ve read that too;
I’ve read them all for promised treat
Of thrills, emotions, tremblings sweet.
* * * * *
The bill-board hippopotamus
It was a wild, up...Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
...mbrella.
One stood in the middle
Of the road hailing cars.
One drove an old cart
All over the town collecting junk.
They were not weird sisters,
No relation to one another.
A duly accredited witch I
Never heard Amherst ever had
But as I say there
Were these three old women.
One was prone to appear
At the door (not mine!):
"I've got my nightgown on,
I can stay all night."
One went to a party
At the president's house once
Locked herself in the b...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...cattle and sheep stations are,
With the sky for my roof and the grass for my bunk,
And a calico bag for my damper and junk;
And scarcely a comrade my memory reveals,
Save the spiritless dingo in tow of my heels.
But I think of the honest old light of my home
When the stars hang in clusters like lamps from the dome,
And I think of the hearth where the dark shadows fall,
When my camp fire is built on the widest of all;
But I'm following Fate, for I know she knows ...Read more of this...
by
Larkin, Philip
...
And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detect my room,
It's specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said
He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.
But I'd go today,
Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sl...Read more of this...
by
Atwood, Margaret
...rates
of queasy chicks. Each spring
there's race of cripples, from the store
to the church. This is the sort of junk
I carry with me; and a clipping
about democracy from the local paper.
Outside the window
they're building the damn hotel,
nail by nail, someone's
crumbling dream. A universe that includes you
can't be all bad, but
does it? At this distance
you're a mirage, a glossy image
fixed in the posture
of the last time I saw you.
Turn you over, there'...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...ap iron, rags and bottles fill the front rooms hither and yon and signs in Yiddish say Abe Kaplan & Co. are running junk shops in whore houses of former times.
The segregated district, the Tenderloin, is here no more; the red-lights are gone; the ring of shovels handling scrap iron replaces the banging of pianos and the bawling songs of pimps.Chicago, 1915....Read more of this...
by
Bogan, Louise
...gold
over Sydney, smoke-pale, rising out of the bay....)
But the day is an up-turned cup
and its sun a junk of red iron
guttering in sluggish-green water--
where shall I pour my dream?...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...the wild South wind,
Sweeping the sea-floors white.
Follow the Romany patteran
West to the sinking sun,
Till the junk-sails lift through the houseless drift.
And the east and west are one.
Follow the Romany patteran
East where the silence broods
By a purple wave on an opal beach
In the hush of the Mahim woods.
"The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky,
The deer to the wholesome wold,
And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid,
As it was in the days of ...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...their tables they fixed it up,
The liars who lie to nations.
And now
Out of the butcher’s job
And the boneyard junk the maggots have cleaned,
Where the jaws of skulls tell the jokes of war ghosts,
Out of this they are calling now: Let’s go back where we were.
Let us run the world again, us, us.
Where the doors are locked the liars say: Wait and we’ll cash in again.
So I hear The People talk.
I hear them tell each other:
Let the strong men be read...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...moked the hives of the Laccadives as we burn the lice in a bunk,
We tack not now to a Gallang prow or a plunging Pei-ho junk;
I had no fear but the seas were clear as far as a sail might fare
Till I met with a lime-washed Yankee brig that rode off Finisterre.
There were canvas blinds to his bow-gun ports to screen the weight he bore,
And the signals ran for a merchantman from Sandy Hook to the Nore.
He would not fly the Rovers' flag -- the bloody or the black,
But now...Read more of this...
by
Edgar, Marriott
...ather,
'E were thinking of building an Ark.
'E'd gotten the wood for the bulwarks,
And all t'other shipbuilding junk,
And wanted some nice Bird's Eye Maple
To panel the side of 'is bunk.
Now Maple were Sam's Monopoly;
That means it were all 'is to cut,
And nobody else 'adn't got none;
So 'e asked Noah three ha'pence a foot.
'A ha'penny too much,' replied Noah
'A Penny a foot's more the mark;
A penny a foot, and when t'rain comes,
I'll give you a ride...Read more of this...
by
Po, Li
...I was about to sail away in a junk,
When suddenly I heard
The sound of stamping and singing on the bank—
It was you and your friends come to bid me farewell.
The Peach Flower Lake is a thousand fathoms deep,
But it cannot compare, O Wang Lun,
With the depth of your love for me....Read more of this...
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