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Famous Onions Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...ar, how he gies the tither yell,
 Between his twa companions!
See, how she peels the skin an’ fell,
 As ane were peelin onions!
Now there, they’re packed aff to hell,
 An’ banish’d our dominions,
 Henceforth this day.


O happy day! rejoice, rejoice!
 Come bouse about the porter!
Morality’s demure decoys
 Shall here nae mair find quarter:
Mackinlay, Russell, are the boys
 That heresy can torture;
They’ll gie her on a rape a hoyse,
 And cowe her measure shorter
 By th’ hea...Read more of this...



by Hughes, Langston
...Waldorf-Astoria. Look at the menu, will 
you:

 GUMBO CREOLE
 CRABMEAT IN CASSOLETTE
 BOILED BRISKET OF BEEF
 SMALL ONIONS IN CREAM
 WATERCRESS SALAD
 PEACH MELBA

Have luncheon there this afternoon, all you jobless.
 Why not?
Dine with some of the men and women who got rich off of
 your labor, who clip coupons with clean white fingers
 because your hands dug coal, drilled stone, sewed gar-
 ments, poured steel to let other people draw dividends
 and live easy.
(O...Read more of this...

by Lee, Li-Young
...I've pulled the last of the year's young onions. 
The garden is bare now. The ground is cold, 
brown and old. What is left of the day flames 
in the maples at the corner of my 
eye. I turn, a cardinal vanishes. 
By the cellar door, I wash the onions, 
then drink from the icy metal spigot. 

Once, years back, I walked beside my father 
among the windfall pears. I can't re...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...b at the muddy bottom of the rivers of 
 Bowery, 
who wept at the romance of the streets with their 
 pushcarts full of onions and bad music, 
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the 
 bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in 
 their lofts, 
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned 
 with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded 
 by orange crates of theology, 
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty 
 incantations which in the yellow ...Read more of this...

by Masters, Edgar Lee
...e women pitied him.
But suppose you are really a lady, and have delicate tastes,
And loathe the smell of whisky and onions.
And the rhythm of Wordsworth's "Ode" runs in your ears,
While he goes about from morning till night
Repeating bits of that common thing;
"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
And then, suppose:
You are a woman well endowed,
And the only man with whom the law and morality
Permit you to have the marital relation
Is the very man that fills...Read more of this...



by Kizer, Carolyn
...br>

Had the ham bone, had the lentils,
Got to meat store for the salt pork,
Got to grocery for the celery.
Had the onions, had the garlic,
Borrowed carrots from the neighbor.
Had the spices, had the parsley.
One big kettle I had not got;
Borrowed pot and lid from landlord.

2.

Dice the pork and chop the celery,
Chop the onions, chop the carrots,
Chop the tender index finger.
Put the kettle on the burner,
Drop the lentils into kettle:
Two quarts water...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...e capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were a...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ld; 
I cross the Laramie plains—I note the rocks in grotesque shapes—the buttes; 
I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions—the barren, colorless, sage-deserts;
I see in glimpses afar, or towering immediately above me, the great mountains—I see
 the
 Wind River and the Wahsatch mountains; 
I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle’s Nest—I pass the Promontory—I
 ascend
 the Nevadas; 
I scan the noble Elk mountain, and wind around its base; 
I see the Humboldt range—I threa...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...t stay - "
I listened in all meekness -
"UNION is strength, I'm bound to say;
In fact, the thing's as clear as day;
But ONIONS are a weakness."...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...a witch's garden 
more beautiful than Eve's 
with carrots growing like little fish, 
with many tomatoes rich as frogs, 
onions as ingrown as hearts, 
the squash singing like a dolphin 
and one patch given over wholly to magic -- 
rampion, a kind of salad root 
a kind of harebell more potent than penicillin, 
growing leaf by leaf, skin by skin. 
as rapt and as fluid as Isadoran Duncan. 
However the witch's garden was kept locked 
and each day a woman who was with child...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...a witch's garden 
more beautiful than Eve's 
with carrots growing like little fish, 
with many tomatoes rich as frogs, 
onions as ingrown as hearts, 
the squash singing like a dolphin 
and one patch given over wholly to magic -- 
rampion, a kind of salad root 
a kind of harebell more potent than penicillin, 
growing leaf by leaf, skin by skin. 
as rapt and as fluid as Isadoran Duncan. 
However the witch's garden was kept locked 
and each day a woman who was with child...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...n’d and derided off from the
 earth! 
Let a floating cloud in the sky—let a wave of the sea—let growing mint, spinach,
 onions, tomatoes—let these be exhibited as shows, at a great price for admission! 
Let all the men of These States stand aside for a few smouchers! let the few seize on what
 they
 choose! let the rest gawk, giggle, starve, obey!
Let shadows be furnish’d with genitals! let substances be deprived of their genitals!

Let there be wealthy and immense cities—but...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...t helpen of his whelkes* white, *pustules
Nor of the knobbes* sitting on his cheeks. *buttons
Well lov'd he garlic, onions, and leeks,
And for to drink strong wine as red as blood.
Then would he speak, and cry as he were wood;
And when that he well drunken had the wine,
Then would he speake no word but Latin.
A fewe termes knew he, two or three,
That he had learned out of some decree;
No wonder is, he heard it all the day.
And eke ye knowen well, how that a ja...Read more of this...

by Raine, Craig
...es offer no resistance.
In the fridge, a heart-shaped jelly
strives to keep a sense of balance.

I slice up the onions. You sew up a dress.
This is the quiet echo--flesh--
white muscle on white muscle,
intimately folded skin,
finished with a satin rustle.
One button only to undo, sewn up with shabby thread.
It is the onion, memory,
that makes me cry.

Because there's everything and nothing to be said,
the clock with hands held up before its face,
s...Read more of this...

by Jong, Erica
...g Shakespeare, Neruda,
immortal Emily
and let yourself flow
into their music. 

Go to the kitchen
and start peeling onions
for homemade sugo. 

Before you know it,
the poem will be crying
as your ripe tomatoes
bubble away
with inspiration. 

When the whole house is filled
with the tender tomato aroma,
start kneading the pasta. 

As you rock
over the damp sensuous dough,
making it bend to your will,
as you make love to this manna
of flour and water,
the poem wi...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...voices I can't make out, 
scraps of song or sea sounds, daylight 
breaking into dust, the perfume of waiting 
rain, of onions and potatoes frying....Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...away, before he began to kill himself, 
and the two of us to betray our love. Can you taste 
what I'm saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch 
of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious,
it stays in the back of your throat like a truth
you never uttered because the time was always wrong,
it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken,
made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt,
in a form we have no words for, and you live on it....Read more of this...

by Twain, Mark
...f "truck" consumed, enjoyed, forgot,
Since I was skinned by last year's lot!

Those joyous beans are passed away;
Those onions blithe, O where are they?
Once loved, lost, mourned--now vexing ILLS
Your shades troop back in annual bills!

And so 'twill be when I'm aground
These yearly duns will still go round,
While other bards, with frantic quills,
Shall damn and damn these annual bills!...Read more of this...

by Haxton, Brooks
...said in his heart, There is no Fun.
Let’s call the House of God the Funhouse. Fun
derives, according to Dr. Onions (may he
with his Johnson rest in peace), from fond,
or foolish. God, in this prime sense, is fond
of us, and we, if all goes well, of him. Let’s
call God luck. There is no luck in scripture.
Chance gets mentioned several times, my favorite
being, Time and chance happeneth to them all;
but luck is the unspoken name. King David
to th...Read more of this...

by Slessor, Kenneth
...> 

Smells rich and rasping, smoke and fat and fish 
and puffs of paraffin that crimp the nose, 
of grease that blesses onions with a hiss; 
You find it ugly, I find it lovely. 

The dips and molls, with flip and shiny gaze 
(death at their elbows, hunger at their heels) 
Ranging the pavements of their pasturage; 
You Find this ugly, I find it lovely ....Read more of this...

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