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Famous Pick Up Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Nash, Ogden
...at's a year, or thirty, to 
Loveliness made woman? 

Oh, Night will not see thirty again, 
Yet soft her wing, Miranda; 
Pick up your glass and tell me, then-- 
How old is Spring, Miranda?...Read more of this...



by Sexton, Anne
...o act--that lady with the brain that broke.

In this fashion I have become a tree.
I have become a vase you can pick up or drop at will,
inanimate at last. What unusual luck! My body
passively resisting. Part of the leftovers. Part of the kill.
Angels of flight, you soarer, you flapper, you floater,
you gull that grows out of my back in the drreams I prefer,

stay near. But give me the totem. Give me the shut eye
where I stand in stone shoes as...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...nees and he's
whistling.
well, time to get out.
pivk up the bill.
tip.
go to the register.
pay.
pick up a toothpick.
go out the door.
your car is still there.
and there are 3 men with heads
and necks
like ostriches all getting into one
car.
they each have a toothpick and now
they are talking about women.
they drive away first
they drive away fast.
they're best i guess.
it's an unberably hot day.
there's a first-stage smo...Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...Go hang yourself, you old M.D.! 
You shall not sneer at me. 
Pick up your hat and stethoscope, 
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap; 
I contemplate a joy exquisite 
I'm not paying you for your visit. 
I did not call you to be told 
My malady is a common cold. 

By pounding brow and swollen lip; 
By fever's hot and scaly grip; 
By those two red redundant eyes 
That weep like woeful April skies; 
By racking snu...Read more of this...

by Ammons, A R
...ard, here
lies the flurry, now it can’t come
back with help or helpful asides, now
we all buy the bitter
incompletions, pick up the knots of
horror, silently raving, and go on
crashing into empty ends not
completions, not rondures the fullness
has come into and spent itself from

I stand on the stump
of a child, whether myself
or my little brother who died, and
yell as far as I can, I cannot leave this place, for
for me it is the dearest and the worst,
it is life nearest to l...Read more of this...



by Pope, Alexander
...
16[small insect] 
17[vapors which were believed to pass odors to the brain] 
18[the West Wind] 
19[stream] 
20[able to pick up a scent] 
21[having the odor of an animal] 
22[ocean] 
23[green] 
24[honey was thought to have medicinal properties] 
25[Animals slightly below humans on the chain of being] 
26[heavenly] 
27[complained] 
28[i.e., on the chain of being between angels and animals]...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ll me, the day you're hanged, 
How you affected such a gullet's-gripe! 
But you, sir, it concerns you that your knaves 
Pick up a manner nor discredit you: 
Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the streets 
And count fair price what comes into their net? 
He's Judas to a tittle, that man is! 
Just such a face! Why, sir, you make amends. 
Lord, I'm not angry! Bid your hang-dogs go 
Drink out this quarter-florin to the health 
Of the munificent House that harbours me 
(...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...
make (if you dare) a better world

(b) expect poison from standing water
  (iii)
lake erie
why not as a joke one night
pick up your bed and walk
to washington – sleep
your damned sleep in its streets
so that one bright metallic morning
it can wake up to the stench
and fermentation of flesh
the gutrot of nerves – the blood’s
green effervescence so active
your skin has a job to keep it all in

isn’t that what things with the palsy
are supposed to do – lovely lake
give the worl...Read more of this...

by Clare, John
...t came wi spring
The twirling top the marble ring
The gingling halfpence hussld up
At pitch and toss the eager stoop
To pick up heads, the smuggeld plays
Neath hovels upon sabbath days
When parson he is safe from view
And clerk sings amen in his pew
The sitting down when school was oer
Upon the threshold by his door
Picking from mallows sport to please
Each crumpld seed he calld a cheese
And hunting from the stackyard sod
The stinking hen banes belted pod
By youths vain fancy...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...fatal sentence:
And heaven can ruin you at pleasure,
By Gage, as soon as by a Cæsar.
Yet did our hero in these days
Pick up some laurel wreaths of praise.
And as the statuary of Seville
Made his crackt saint an exc'llent devil;
So though our war small triumph brings,
We gain'd great fame in other things.


"Did not our troops show great discerning,
And skill your various arts in learning?
Outwent they not each native noodle
By far, in playing Yankee-doodle,
Which ...Read more of this...

by Larkin, Philip
...Always too eager for the future, we
Pick up bad habits of expectancy.
Something is always approaching; every day
Till then we say,

Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear
Sparkling armada of promises draw near.
How slow they are! And how much time they waste,
Refusing to make haste!

Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks
Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks
Each big ap...Read more of this...

by Koch, Kenneth
...ay station and the daughter is holding a bag
Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it.
In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by
 the mother's
And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker
May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee
Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love
 or the same love
As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers
The better love lingering b...Read more of this...

by Lewis, C S
...at, all along, I was assuming a posterity 
Of gentle hearts: someone, however distant in the depths of time, 
Who could pick up our signal, who could understand a story. There won't be. 

Between the new Hembidae and us who are dying, already 
There rises a barrier across which no voice can ever carry,
For devils are unmaking language. We must let that alone forever. 
Uproot your loves, one by one, with care, from the future, 
And trusting to no future, receiv...Read more of this...

by Edgar, Marriott
...glee.
And said, 'Sam, for this gallant action.
You can hot up your pudding for tea.'

Sam looked 'round to pick up his pudding
But it wasn't there, nowhere about.
In the place where he thought he had left it,
Lay the cannon ball he'd just tipped out.

Sam saw in a flash what 'ad happened:
By an unprecedented mishap.
The pudding his mother had sent him,
Had blown Badajoz off map.

That's why fuisilliers wear to this moment
A badge which they think'...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...and freeze upon me. 

I search with the crowd—not one of the company is wash’d to us alive; 
In the morning I help pick up the dead and lay them in rows in a barn.

12
Now of the older war-days, the defeat at Brooklyn, 
Washington stands inside the lines—he stands on the intrench’d hills, amid a
 crowd of
 officers, 
His face is cold and damp—he cannot repress the weeping drops, 
He lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes—the color is blanch’d from his
 cheeks, 
He s...Read more of this...

by Prelutsky, Jack
...I am Super Samson Simpson,
I'm superlatively strong,
I like to carry elephants,
I do it all day long,
I pick up half a dozen
and hoist them in the air,
it's really somewhat simple,
for I have strength to spare.

My muscles are enormous,
they bulge from top to toe,
and when I carry elephants,
they ripple to and fro,
but I am not the strongest
in the Simpson family,
for when I carry elephants,
my grandma carries me....Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...case,
And both we go *abouten our purchase.* *seeking what we
Take thou thy part, what that men will thee give, may pick up*
And I shall mine, thus may we bothe live.
And if that any of us have more than other,
Let him be true, and part it with his brother."
"I grante," quoth the devil, "by my fay."
And with that word they rode forth their way,
And right at th'ent'ring of the towne's end,
To which this Sompnour shope* him for to wend,** *shaped **go
They saw a...Read more of this...

by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...rry
Once more let fall upon the plain;
St. Peter forthwith stoop'd again.
The Lord kept making him thus bend
To pick up cherries without end.
For a long time the thing went on;
The Lord then said, in cheerful tone:
"Had'st thou but moved when thou wert bid,
Thou of this trouble had'st been rid;
The man who small things scorns, will next,
By things still smaller be perplex'd."

 1797....Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...y simple. No one would stop and pick me up

even though I was carrying fishing tackle. People usually

stop and pick up a fisherman. I had to wait three hours for a

ride.

 The sun was like a huge fifty-cent piece that someone had

 poured kerosene on and then had lit with a match and said,

"Here, hold this while I go get a newspaper, " and put the

coin in my hand, but never came back.

 I had walked for miles and miles until I came to the rock

under t...Read more of this...

by Swift, Jonathan
...] go joyful back,
To [rob the] church, their tenants rack,
Go snacks with [rogues and rapparees,]
And keep the peace to pick up fees;
In every job to have a share,
A goal or barrack to repair;
And turn the tax for public roads
Commodious to their own abodes."
"Perhaps I may allow the Dean
Had too much satire in his vein,
And seemed determined not to starve it,
Because no age could more deserve it.
Yet malice never was his aim;
He lashed the vice, but spared the name;
...Read more of this...

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