Famous Lobby Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Hedge Of Rubber Trees

....
Less and less. A dream she'd had kept coming back,
years after. She'd taken a job in Washington with 
some right-wing lobby, and lived in one of those
bow-windowed mansions that turn into roominghouses,
and her room there had a full-length mirror: oval,
with a molding, is the way I picture it. In her dream
something woke her, she got up to look, and there 
in the glass she'd had was covered over—she gave it
 a wondering emphasis—with gray veils.

The West Village was changi...Read more of this...
by Clampitt, Amy


A Tale Of The Thirteenth Floor

...town hotel;
I name no name, but its sordid fame
Is table talk in hell.
I name no name, but hell's own flame
Illumes the lobby garish,
A gilded snare just off Times Square
For the maidens of the parish.

The revolving door swept the grimy floor
Like a crinoline grotesque,
And a lowly bum from an ancient slum
Crept furtively past the desk.
His footsteps sift into the lift
As a knife in the sheath is slipped,
Stealthy and swift into the lift
As a vampire into a crypt.

Old Maxie...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden

A Week Later

...nd hours. We had signed the papers and come down to the
ground floor of the Chrysler Building,
the intact beauty of its lobby around us
like a king's tomb, on the ceiling the little
painted plane, in the mural, flying. And it
entered my strictured heart, this morning,
slightly, shyly as if warily,
untamed, a greater sense of the sweetness
and plenty of his ongoing life,
unknown to me, unseen by me,
unheard, untouched-but known, seen,
heard, touched. And it came to me,
for mom...Read more of this...
by Olds, Sharon

Desesperanto

...'s apprised of your intention
and seems to be your traveling companion
is merely the detritus of a dream.
You cross the lobby and go out alone.

You crossed the lobby and went out alone
through the square, where two red-headed girls played
hopscotch on a chalk grid, now in the shade,
of a broad-leafed plane tree, now in the sun.
The lively, lovely, widowed afternoon
disarmed, uncoupled, shuffled and disarrayed
itself; despite itself, dismayed
you with your certainties, your v...Read more of this...
by Hacker, Marilyn

Fifth Amendment

...past the hard hats eating lunch. Which one was he?
She felt like one of those women you sometimes see
Crying in a hotel lobby. But he couldn't figure her out.
She wrote him a letter saying, "Please don't phone me,"
Meaning, "Please phone me." And there were times when she
Refused to speak at all. Would this be one of them?
On went the makeup and the accessories. Her time was now,
And he could no more share her future than she
Could go to college with him twenty years ago.
She...Read more of this...
by Lehman, David


Middlesex

...Elaine the bobby-soxer,
Fresh-complexioned with Innoxa,
Gains the garden - father's hobby -
Hangs her Windsmoor in the lobby,
Settles down to sandwich supper and the television screen.

Gentle Brent, I used to know you
Wandering Wembley-wards at will,
Now what change your waters show you
In the meadowlands you fill!
Recollect the elm-trees misty
And the footpaths climbing twisty
Under cedar-shaded palings,
Low laburnum-leaned-on railings
Out of Northolt on and upward to the ...Read more of this...
by Betjeman, John

Part 7 of Trout Fishing in America

...shing in America, a cheap hotel. It is very old and run by

some Chinese. They are young and ambitious Chinese and

the lobby is filled with the smell of Lysol.

 The Lysol sits like another guest on the stuffed furniture

reading a copy of the Chronicle, the Sports Section. It is the

only furniture I have ever seen in my life that looks like baby

food.

 And the Lysol sits asleep next to an old Italian pensioner

who listens to the heavy ticking of the clock and dreams of
...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Rain After a Vaudeville Show

...; 
Smoke, the wet steam of clothes, the stench of plush, 
Powder, cheap perfume, mingled in a rush. 
I stepped into the lobby -- and stood still 
Struck dumb by sudden beauty, body and will. 
Cleanness and rapture -- excellence made plain -- 
The storming, thrashing arrows of the rain! 
Pouring and dripping on the roofs and rods, 
Smelling of woods and hills and fresh-turned sods, 
Black on the sidewalks, gray in the far sky, 
Crashing on thirsty panes, on gutters dry, 
Hurry...Read more of this...
by Benet, Stephen Vincent

Take This Waltz

...(After Lorca) 

Now in Vienna there are ten pretty women.
There's a shoulder where death comes to cry.
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows.
There's a tree where the doves go to die.
There's a piece that was torn from the morning,
and it hangs in the Gallery of Frost—
Ay, ay ay ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws.

I want you, I want you, I want you
on a chair with a dead magazine.
In the cave at the tip of the lily,
in ...Read more of this...
by Cohen, Leonard

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