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Famous Max Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Nash, Ogden
...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, the elevator boy,
Was reading an ode by Shelley,
But he dropped the ode as it were a toad
When the gun jammed into his belly.
There came a whisper as soft as mud
In the bed of an old canal:
"Take me up to the suite of Pinball Pete,
The rat who betrayed my gal."

The lift doth rise with groans and sighs
Like a duchess for the waltz,
Then in mid...Read more of this...



by Ginsberg, Allen
...ayer. 
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. 
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle 
 Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you. 
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by 
 Time Magazine? 
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine. 
I read it every week. 
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner 
 candystore. 
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. 
It's always telling me...Read more of this...

by Ehrmann, Max
...Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spiri...Read more of this...

by Grahn, Judy
...Taylor, Gabor
Helen, when she goes to Hollywood
to be a walking star,
to be an actor

She is far more that a product
of Max Factor,
Max Factor didn't make her
though the make-up helps us
see what we would like
to take her for

her flesh is like glass,
a chandelier
a mirror

Harlowe, Holiday, Monroe
Helen
when she went to Hollywood
to be an angel

And it is she and not we
who is different

She who marries the crown prince
who leads the processional dance,
she who sweeps eterna...Read more of this...

by Lehman, David
...What I propose is not 
 Marxism, which 
 is not dead yet in 
 the English department, 
Not maximalism, which was 
 a still-born alternative 
 to minimalism, 
Nor Maxism, which rests on 
 adulation of Max 
 Beerbohm, parodist 
 nonpareil, 
But maximism, the love 
 of adages, 
Or Maximism, the advocacy of 
 maximum gastronomic 
 pleasure on the model 
 of a meal at Maxim's 
 in Paris in, say, 1950. 
Is that clear?...Read more of this...



by Sexton, Anne
.... Yeats 

Big heart, 
wide as a watermelon, 
but wise as birth, 
there is so much abundance 
in the people I have: 
Max, Lois, Joe, Louise, 
Joan, Marie, Dawn, 
Arlene, Father Dunne, 
and all in their short lives 
give to me repeatedly, 
in the way the sea 
places its many fingers on the shore, 
again and again 
and they know me, 
they help me unravel, 
they listen with ears made of conch shells, 
they speak back with the wine of the best region. 
They are my staff.Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...na
until that strange labor took her.
Then the room was bankrupt.
That was the end of her paying.



5. MAX

Max and I
two immoderate sisters,
two immoderate writers,
two burdeners,
made a pact.
To beat death down with a stick.
To take over.
To build our death like carpenters.
When she had a broken back,
each night we built her sleep.
Talking on the hot line
until her eyes pulled down like shades.
And we agreed in those long hushed phon...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ch thanked me as if she had said it,
(With her eyes, do you understand?)
Because I patted her horse while I led it;
And Max, who rode on her other hand,
Said, no bird flew past but she inquired
What its true name was, nor ever seemed tired---
If that was an eagle she saw hover,
And the green and grey bird on the field was the plover.
When suddenly appeared the Duke:
And as down she sprung, the small foot pointed
On to my hand,---as with a rebuke,
And as if his backbone we...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...out your oldest brandy for a boast,
From that small barrel in the very roots
Of your deep cellar, man. Why here is Max!
Ho! Welcome, Max, you're scarcely here in time.
We want to drink to old Jan's luck, and smoke
His best tobacco for a grand climax.
Here, Jan, a paper, fragrant as crushed thyme,
We'll have the best to wish you luck, or may we choke!"

5
Max Breuck unclasped his broadcloth cloak, and 
sat.
"Well thought of, Franz; here's luck to Mynheer Jan.<...Read more of this...

by Popa, Vasko
...to Karl Max Ostojic

Why do you stare at the little box 
That in her emptiness 
Holds the whole world 

If the little box holds 
The world in her emptiness 
Then the antiworld 
Holds the little box in its antihand 

Who'll bite off the antiworld's antihand 
And on that hand 
Five hundred antifingers 

Do you believe 
You'll bite it off 
With your thirty-two teeth 

...Read more of this...

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