Famous Portland Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Portland poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous portland poems. These examples illustrate what a famous portland poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Burns, Robert
...eed on wings of fire,
The object of his fond desire,
Beyond his boldest hopes, at hand:
Paint all the triumph of the Portland Band;
Mark how they lift the joy-exulting voice,
And how their num’rous creditors rejoice;
But just as hopes to warm enjoyment rise,
Cry CONVALESCENCE! and the vision flies.
Then next pourtray a dark’ning twilight gloom,
Eclipsing sad a gay, rejoicing morn,
While proud Ambition to th’ untimely tomb
By gnashing, grim, despairing fiends is b...Read more of this...
by
Snyder, Gary
...Your poems, your life.
The author's my student,
He even quotes me.
Forty years since we joked in a kitchen in Portland
Twenty since you disappeared.
All those years and their moments—
Crackling bacon, slamming car doors,
Poems tried out on friends,
Will be one more archive,
One more shaky text.
But life continues in the kitchen
Where we still laugh and cook,
Watching snow....Read more of this...
by
Jeffers, Robinson
...here, on a small hill
Above the gray-mouthed Pacific, cottages and a thick-walled tower, all made of rough sea rock
And Portland cement. I imagine, fifty years from now,
A mist-gray figure moping about this place in mad moonlight, examining the mortar-joints, pawing the
Parasite ivy: "Does the place stand? How did it take that last earthquake?" Then someone comes
From the house-door, taking a poodle for his bedtime walk. The dog snarls and retreats; the man
Stands ri...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...second hand moving forward, red.
Getting ready to load my last bus.-Farewell, Walnut
Creek Richmond Vallejo Portland Pacific
Highway
Fleet-footed Quicksilver, God of transience.
One last package sits lone at midnight sticking up out
of the Coast rack high as the dusty fluorescent
light.
The wage they pay us is too low to live on. Tragedy
reduced to numbers.
This for the poor shepherds. I am a communist.
Farewell ye Greyhound w...Read more of this...
by
Housman, A E
...e for the color of his hair.
Now 'tis oakum for his fingers and the treadmill for his feet,
And the quarry-gang on Portland in the cold and in the heat,
And between his spells of labor in the time he has to spare
He can curse the God that made him for the color of his hair....Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...RQUETTE
Aliases: Richard Lawrence Marquette, Richard
Lourence Marquette
Description:
26, born Dec. 12, 1934, Portland, Oregon
170 to 180 pounds
muscular
light brown, cut short
blue
Complexion: ruddy Race:
white Nationality: American
Occupations:
auto body w
recapper, s
survey rod
arks: 6" hernia scar; tattoo "Mom" in wreath on
ight forearm
ull upper denture, may also have lower denture.
Reportedly frequents
s, and is an avid trout fi...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...wherever there's a tear in the fabric
around weymouth - portland appears
from abbotsbury hill it's just a long
thin line humped at one end
closer (from chesil beach) a head-on
massive lump of rock gnashed by the sea
if you stand at sandsfoot castle
there's a military feel - an armed guard
of an island harsh with prisons
snarling with secrets visitors don't probe
but on the road up out of town
towards the eas...Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
...relate;
They were rescued by the steamer "Hagbrook" in the afternoon,
When after taking to their boats, and brought to Portland very soon.
The barque "Nor" was bound from New York to Stettin,
And when she struck the "Saxmundham," oh! what terrible din!
Because the merciless water did rush in,
Then the ship carpenters to patch the breach did begin.
But, alas! all their efforts proved in vain,
For still the water did on them gain;
Still they resolved to save her wh...Read more of this...
by
Housman, A E
...The star-filled seas are smooth tonight
From France to England strown;
Black towers above Portland light
The felon-quarried stone.
On yonder island; not to rise,
Never to stir forth free,
Far from his folk a dead lad lies
That once was friends with me.
Lie you easy, dream you light,
And sleep you fast for aye;
And luckier may you find the night
Than you ever found the day....Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...you as the Clothworkers’ Hall in gold
Became you, and you became it through the protest years,
When the Brotherton’s Portland stone, its white stone
Of innocence was snow in the School of English garden,
‘A living sculpture’, a Grene Knicht awaiting spring.
The years become you, Oxford, Leeds and London,
As you became them through the years of poems,
Through passing, silent crowds, through the cherry blossom
You sat under, plucked and ploughed, ‘a dissenting vo...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...hats fishing in the dawn.
KNOCK ON WOOD (PART TWO)
One spring afternoon as a child in the strange town of Portland,
I walked down to a different street corner, and saw a row of old houses,
huddled together like seals on a rock. Then there was a long field that
came sloping down off a hill. The field was covered with green grass and
bushes. On top of the hill there was a grove of tall, dark trees. At a
distance I saw a waterfall come pouring d...Read more of this...
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