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Famous Kitchen Table Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...en they'd done.

When he got home the 'ouse were in dark ness,
So he slipped in as sly as a fox, 
Laid the 'sparagus on kitchen table 
And crept up to bed in his socks.

He got in without waking Mother, 
A truly remarkable feat,
And pictured her telling the neighbours 
As 'twere 'sparagus-what the toffs eat.

But when he woke up in the morning 
It were nigh on a quarter to ten,
There were no signs of Mother, or breakfast
Said Pa, "What's she done with her-sen?"

He shouted "W...Read more of this...
by Edgar, Marriott



...the eye of my apple, the pear's port 
window. You're not supposed to exist 
at all this decade. You're to be flat 
as a kitchen table, so children with 
roller skates can speed over you 
like those sidewalks of my childhood 
that each gave a different roar under 
my wheels. You're required to show 
muscle striations like the ocean 
sand at ebb tide, but brick hard. 
Clothing is not designed for women 
of whose warm and flagrant bodies 
you are a swelling part. Yet I confess 
...Read more of this...
by Piercy, Marge
..., some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...Outside the sky is light with stars; 
There's a hollow roaring from the sea. 
And, alas! for the little almond flowers, 
The wind is shaking the almond tree. 

How little I thought, a year ago, 
In the horrible cottage upon the Lee 
That he and I should be sitting so 
And sipping a cup of camomile tea. 

Light as feathers the witches fly, 
The ho...Read more of this...
by Mansfield, Katherine
...f the hood,
in the ripped silk
of the rocking, buckled pram,
none of the dead clocks moving.

And carrying them in
to a kitchen table,
a near-lifetime’s Woodies
coating each cough,
he will tickle them awake;
will hold like primitive headphones
the tinkling shells to each ear,
select and apply unfailingly
the right tool to the right cog
and with movements 
as unpredictable as the pram’s
will wind and counter-wind
the scrap to metronomic life.

And at the pub, 
at the Grey Hors...Read more of this...
by Lindley, John



...What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside--
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.

But beyond t...Read more of this...
by Collins, Billy
...oof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine....Read more of this...
by Collins, Billy
...I'd not complain of Sister Jane, for she was good and kind,
Combining with rare comeliness distinctive gifts of mind;
Nay, I'll admit it were most fit that, worn by social cares,
She'd crave a change from parlor life to that below the stairs,
And that, eschewing needlework and music, she should take
Herself to the substantial art of manufacturing cake.

At...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene
...nto one of those oval
baskets for holding apples,
which her mother could have lined with a soft cloth
and placed on the kitchen table
so she could keep an eye on infant Katherine
while she scrubbed potatoes or shelled a bag of peas,

the way I am keeping an eye on that cormorant
who just broke the glassy surface
and is moving away from me and the iron bridge,
swiveling his curious head,
slipping out to where the sun rakes the water
and filters through the trees that crowd the...Read more of this...
by Collins, Billy
...uch like a vulva because of an air bubble. 

 Then there are sixteen naked little husbands standing
in a row across the kitchen table. 

 She diddles them and they produce sixteen little erections. 

 She thinks she might melt her husband again. She likes
melting him. 

 She might pour him into an even smaller series of husband
molds . . ....Read more of this...
by Edson, Russell
...k, 
says Clock. 

Your bag is black and waiting. 
How can you leave your house? 
The stove hunches its shoulders, 

the kitchen table stares at the sky. 
You're heaving yourself out in the snow 
groping toward the front door....Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things