Famous Pencils Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Pencils poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous pencils poems. These examples illustrate what a famous pencils poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...This nothingness that feeds upon itself:
Pencils that turn to water in the hand,
Parts of a sentence, hanging in the air,
Thoughts breaking in the mind like glass,
Blank sheets of paper that reflect the world
Whitened the world that I was silenced by.
There were two years of that. Slowly,
Whatever splits, dissevers, cuts, cracks, ravels, or divides
To bring me to that diet of corrosion, burned
And...Read more of this...
by
Kees, Weldon
...I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls o...Read more of this...
by
Roethke, Theodore
...died my weapons system.
Grenades, the portable rack, the yellow spout
of the anthrax-ray: in order. Yes, and most
of my pencils were sharp.
This edge of the galaxy has often seen
a defence so stiff, but it could only go
one way.
—Mr Bones, your troubles give me vertigo,
& backache. Somehow, when I make your scene,
I cave to feel as if
de roses of dawns & pearls of dusks, made up
by some ol' writer-man, got right forgot
& the greennesses of ours.
Springwater grow so thick ...Read more of this...
by
Berryman, John
...order comes;
For wine, for ale, for fowl, for fish--for
Ev'n all one's appetite can wish for:
But O ye pens and O ye pencils,
And all ye scribbling utensils,
Say in what words and in what meter,
Shall unfeign'd admiration greet her,
For that rich banquet so refin'd
Her conversation gave the mind;
The solid meal of sense and worth,
Set off by the desert of mirth;
Wit's fruit and pleasure's genial bowl,
And all the joyous flow of soul;
For these, and every kind ing...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...COME you, cartoonists,
Hang on a strap with me here
At seven o'clock in the morning
On a Halsted street car.
Take your pencils
And draw these faces.
Try with your pencils for these crooked faces,
That pig-sticker in one corner--his mouth--
That overall factory girl--her loose cheeks.
Find for your pencils
A way to mark your memory
Of tired empty faces.
After their night's sleep,
In the moist dawn
And cool daybreak,
Faces
Tired of wishes,
Empty of dreams....Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...stand
for hours in the freezing winds
off the lost books of our fathers
or at least until we can no longer
hold our pencils. Men keep coming
in and going out, and two of them
recall the great dirty fights
between Willy Pep and Sandy Sadler,
between little white perfection
and death in red plaid trunks.
I want to tell them I saw
the last fight, I rode out
to Yankee Stadium with two deserters
from the French Army of Indochina
and back with a drunken priest
and bo...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...e
all poetry and roses. Life
can be bus rides, gritty sidewalks,
electric bills, dishwashing,
chapped lips, dull stubby pencils
with the erasers chewed off,
cheap radios played too loud,
the rank smell of stale coffee
yet still glow
with the inner fire of an opal,
still taste like honey.
-Julie Alger...Read more of this...
by
Alger, Julie Hill
..."I hate my verses, every line, every word.
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.
Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch
One color, one glinting
flash, of the splendor of things.
Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets of wax,
The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the storm of the wings."
--This wild swan of a world is no hunte...Read more of this...
by
Jeffers, Robinson
...r's face.
I don not know; perhaps I'd raise their hopes
By looking at their pens and envelopes,
Their pins and needles, pencils, spools of thread,
Cheap tawdry stuff, before I shake my head
And go back to my cosy kitchen nook
Without another thought or backward look.
I would not see their pain nor hear their sigh,
Trying to sell what no one wants to buy.
I know I am a nuisance. I can see
They only buy because they pity me.
They may . . . I've had a cottage of my own,
A husba...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...PENCILS
telling where the wind comes from
open a story.
Pencils
telling where the wind goes
end a story.
These eager pencils
come to a stop
.. only .. when the stars high over
come to a stop.
Out of cabalistic to-morrows
come cryptic babies calling life
a strong and a lovely thing.
I have seen neither these
nor the stars high over
come to a stop.
Neith...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...adopts the children
of broken-down burlesque actresses; he has
cried a heart of tears for Windy MacPherson’s
father; he pencils wrists of lonely women.
Can a man sit at a desk in a skyscraper in Chicago
and be a harnessmaker in a corn town in Iowa
and feel the tall grass coming up in June
and the ache of the cottonwood trees
singing with the prairie wind?...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...res.
Each child is disciplined; absorbed and still
At his small desk. Yet lift the lid and see,
Amidst frayed books and pencils, other shapes:
Vicious rope, glaring blade, the gun cocked to kill....Read more of this...
by
Scannell, Vernon
...her like cold frowns
Amid the gaiety of topaz seals,
Carved though they were with heads, and arms, and wheels.
A row of pencils knobbed with quartz or sard
Delighted her. And rings of every size
Turned smartly round like hoops before her eyes,
Amethyst-flamed or ruby-girdled, jarred
To spokes and flashing triangles, and starred
Like rockets bursting on a festal day.
Charlotta could not tear herself away.
With eyes glued tightly on a golden box,
Whose rare enamel piqued her wi...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...
tulip bulbs out of the closet
and set it on the table and take off the foil hood.
The shoots stand up like young green pencils,
and there in the room is the comfortable smell of rot,
the bulb that did not make it, marked with
ridges like an elephant's notched foot,
I walk down the hall as if I were moving through the
long stem of the tulip toward the closed sheath.
In the kitchen I throw a palmful of peppercorns into the
saucepan
as if I would grow a black tree from the sou...Read more of this...
by
Olds, Sharon
...haven't made a single sale to-night.
Oh, thank you, sir; but take the pencil too;
I'm not a beggar, I'm a business man.
Pencils I deal in, red and black and blue;
It's hard, but still I do the best I can.
Most days I make enough to pay for bread,
A cup o' coffee, stretching room at night.
One needs so little -- to be warm and fed,
A hole to kennel in -- oh, one's all right . . .
Excuse me, you're a painter, are you not?
I saw you looking at that dealer's show,
The croûtes he...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...en paths along.
I have a Vision of the Future, chum,
The workers' flats in fields of soya beans
Tower up like silver pencils, score on score:
And Surging Millions hear the Challenge come
From microphones in communal canteens
"No Right! No Wrong! All's perfect, evermore!"...Read more of this...
by
Betjeman, John
...tly deem so fair a prize,
The sovereign Mistress of the skies,"
He said, and drew a mazy line,
With crimson touch his pencils shine,
The mingling colours sweetly fade,
And justly temper light and shade.
He look'd; the swelling Cloud on high
With wider circuit spread the sky,
Stretch'd to the sun an ampler train,
And pour'd new glories on the main.
As quick, effacing every ground,
His pencil swept the canvas round,
And o'er its field, with magic art,
Call'd forth new forms...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...ive, I do entreat
With clasped hands praying—oh, come back,
Make peace, and you shall nothing lack.
See now my pencils—paper—here,
And pointless compasses, and dear
Old lacquer-work; and stoneware clear
Through glass protecting; all man's toys
So coveted by girls and boys.
Great China monsters—bodies much
Like cucumbers—you all shall touch.
I yield up all! my picture rare
Found beneath antique rubbish heap,
My great and tapestried oak chair...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...hirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and star...Read more of this...
by
Joseph, Jenny
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