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Famous Packing Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Frost, Robert
...Except, it seemed, the poetess's poems.
Books, I should say!—-if books are what is needed.
A whole edition in a packing case
That, overflowing like a horn of plenty,
Or like the poetess's heart of love,
Had spilled them near the window, toward the light
Where driven rain had wet and swollen them.
Enough to stock a village library—
Unfortunately all of one kind, though.
They bad been brought home from some publisher
And taken thus into the family.
Boys and ...Read more of this...



by Lee, Li-Young
...The angel story once more!
You love the spider story. You laugh at the spider.
Let me tell it!

But the boy is packing his shirts,
he is looking for his keys. Are you a god,
the man screams, that I sit mute before you?
Am I a god that I should never disappoint?

But the boy is here. Please, Baba, a story?
It is an emotional rather than logical equation,
an earthly rather than heavenly one,
which posits that a boy's supplications
and a father's love add up to ...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...or a lift, or a brace,
 But the old man knew its lead and place.

 Then up and spoke the caulkyers bold,
 Which was packing the pump in the afterhold:
 "Since you with us have made so free,
 Will you kindly tell what your name might be? "

 The old man kindly answered them:
 "It might be Japheth, it might be Shem,
 Or it might be Ham (though his skin was dark),
 Whereas it is Noah, commanding the Ark.

 "Your wheel is new and your pumps are strange,
 But otherwise I p...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ery and the herring-fishery—the large sweep-seines—the windlasses on
 shore
 work’d by horses—the clearing, curing, and packing-houses; 
Deep in the forest, in piney woods, turpentine dropping from the incisions in the
 trees—There
 are the turpentine works,
There are the ******* at work, in good health—the ground in all directions is
 cover’d
 with
 pine straw: 
—In Tennessee and Kentucky, slaves busy in the coalings, at the forge, by the
 furnace-blaze, or
 at the corn-shuc...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...glee: "When this I spill,
Of life they'll soon be lacking."
Said I: "If even one you kill,
You *****! I'll send you packing."

Just think - ten thousand eager lives
In that toil-worn upcasting,
Their homes, their babies and their wives
Destroyed in one fell blasting!
Imagine that swift-scalding hell! . . .
And though, mayhap, it seems a
Fantastic, far-fetched parallel -
Remember . . . Hiroshima....Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...hog-hook, the scalder’s tub, gutting,
 the
 cutter’s cleaver, the packer’s maul, and the plenteous winter-work of
 pork-packing; 
Flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice—the barrels and the half and quarter
 barrels,
 the loaded barges, the high piles on wharves and levees; 
The men, and the work of the men, on railroads, coasters, fish-boats, canals; 
The daily routine of your own or any man’s life—the shop, yard, store, or
 factory;
These shows all near you by day ...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...our doggy husband. He went on.

Now I am silent, hate
Up to my neck,
Thick, thick.
I do not speak.
I am packing the hard potatoes like good clothes,
I am packing the babies,
I am packing the sick cats.
O vase of acid,
It is love you are full of. You know who you hate.
He is hugging his ball and chain down by the gate
That opens to the sea
Where it drives in, white and black,
Then spews it back.
Every day you fill him with soul-stuff, like a pit...Read more of this...

by Dobyns, Stephen
...My stepdaughter and I circle round and round.
You see, I like the music loud, the speakers
throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether
Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so
each bass notes is like a hand smacking the gut.
But my stepdaughter disagrees. She is four
and likes the music decorous, pitched below
her own voice-that tenuous projection of self.
With music blasting, she feels she disappears,
is lost within the blare, which in...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...nted Hereticks
By shallow Edwards and Scotch what d'ye call:
But we do hope to find out all your tricks,
Your plots and packing wors then those of Trent,
That so the Parliament
May with their wholsom and preventive Shears
Clip your Phylacteries, though bauk your Ears,
And succour our just Fears
When they shall read this clearly in your charge
New Presbyter is but Old Priest Writ Large....Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...> Trout Fishing in America Shorty

could be the first piece in an important collection.

 We would nail him up in a packing crate with a big label

on it.

 Contents:

 Trout Fishing in America Shorty



 Occupation:

 Wine



Address:

C/O Nelson Algren

Chicago

 And there would be stickers all over the crate, saying:

"GLASS/HANDLE WITH CARE/SPECIAL HANDLING/GLASS

/DON'T SPILL/THIS SIDE UP/HANDLE THIS WINO LIKE HE

WAS AN ANGEL"

 And Trout Fishing in America Shor...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...`agents' -- something not requiring cash. 
(You can always furnish cheaply, when your cash or credit fails, 
With a packing-case, a hammer, and a pound of two-inch nails -- 
And, maybe, a drop of varnish and sienna, too, for tints, 
And a scrap or two of oilcloth, and a yard or two of chintz). 
They would pull themselves together, pay a week's rent in advance, 
But it never lasted longer than a month by any chance. 

The office was their haven, for they lived ther...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...
 Was something I would never hear.

He faces his second winter in the Sierra

 A hard brown bug, maybe a beetle, 
 Packing a ball of sparrow **** -- 
 What shall I call it? 
 **** beetle? Why's it pushing here 
 At this great height in the thin air 
 With its ridiculous waddle 

 Up the hard side of Hard Luck Hill? 
 And the furred thing that frightened me -- 
 Bobcat, coyote, wild dog -- 
 Flat eyes in winter bush, stiff tail 
 Holding his ground, a rotted log. 
 Gr...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...e nights by the Sawtooth mountains now
just something under a sheet or a cross
or a stone or under an easy delusion,
or packing a bible or a golf bag or a
briefcase: how they go, how they go! -- all
the ones you thought would never go.

days like this. like your day today.
maybe the rain on the window trying to
get through to you. what do you see today?
what is it? where are you? the best
days are sometimes the first, sometimes
the middle and even sometimes th...Read more of this...

by Berman, David
...cola
 when I held a glass of it up to the light
and found an expensive flashlight in the pocket of a winter coat
 I was packing away for summer.

It all reminds me of that moment when you take off your sunglasses
after a long drive and realize it's earlier
and lighter out than you had accounted for.

You know what I'm talking about,

and that's the kind of fellowship that's taking place in town, out in
the public spaces. You won't overhear anyone using the words
"...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...obe ease?
Rouse up, Sirs! Give your brains a racking
To find the remedy we're lacking,
Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!"
At this the Mayor and Corporation
Quaked with a mighty consternation.

An hour they sate in council,
At length the Mayor broke silence:
"For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell;
I wish I were a mile hence!
It's easy to bid one rack one's brain— 
I'm sure my poor head aches again
I've scratched it so, and all in vain.
Oh for a trap, a trap, a ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Robert
...whale
Who spewed Nantucket bones on the thrashed swell
And stirred the troubled waters to whirlpools
To send the Pequod packing off to hell:
This is the end of them, three-quarters fools,
Snatching at straws to sail
Seaward and seaward on the turntail whale,
Spouting out blood and water as it rolls,
Sick as a dog to these Atlantic shoals:
Clamavimus, O depths. Let the sea-gulls wail

For water, for the deep where the high tide
Mutters to its hurt self, mutters and ebbs.Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...pale;
The heedless mirth of the shipboard was changed to the care of the trail.
We flung ourselves in the struggle, packing our grub in relays,
Step by step to the summit in the bale of the winter days.

Floundering deep in the sump-holes, stumbling out again;
Crying with cold and weakness, crazy with fear and pain.
Then from the depths of our travail, ere our spirits were broke,
Grim, tenacious and savage, the lust of the trail awoke.

"Klondike or bust!" ran...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...his hook
Take off a shiny perch to cook;
The mother garbed her laughing boy,
And sang a silver lilt of joy;
The artist, packing up his paint,
Went serenely as a saint.

The sky was gentleness and love,
The sea soft-crooning as a dove;
Peace reigned so brilliantly profound
In every sight, in every sound. . . .
Alas, what mockery for me!
Can peace be mine till Man be free?...Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...I am packing to go to the airport 
but somehow I am never packed. 
I keep remembering more things 
I keep forgetting. 

Secretly the clock is bolting 
forward ten minutes at a click 
instead of one. Each time 
I look away, it jumps. 

Now I remember I have to find 
the cats. I have four cats 
even when I am asleep. 
One is on the bed and I...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...st jab it with your knife.)
Fine specimens of manhood they would reckon us out there.
It's the tracking and the packing and the poling in the sun;
It's the sleeping in the open, it's the rugged, unfaked food;
It's the snow-shoe and the paddle, and the campfire and the gun,
And when I think of what I was, I know that it is good.

Just think of how we've poled all day up this strange little stream;
Since life began no eye of man has seen this place before;
How fearl...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things