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Famous Pumping Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Voznesensky, Andrei
...the nose! 
 It's long, while life is getting shorter. 
 At night on faces, pale as blotter, 
 like a black hawk, or pumping hose, 
 the nose absorbs us, I suppose. 

 They say, the Northern Eskimos 
 kiss one another with the nose 

 It hasn't caught on here, of course.

© Copyright Alec Vagapov's translation...Read more of this...



by Gorry, Godfrey Mutiso
...If you meet literature from Africa
Or even their mentors
In such works
You realize a trait of madness
Pumping into the throbbing poetics.
There is a knack in it that sparks alight
The nearest shrubs;
Intrigue and sensation incomparable.
The heart of African literature
Pumping wordy blood into fragile young minds.
Rejuvenating the African word
That merges into a whirlpool mixture
Of creativity, and strengthen our verbosity.
Impregnated words
B...Read more of this...

by Estep, Maggie
...there weaving through the air.

The strobe light is illuminating my pubic unicorn. Madonna's song Borderline
is pumping through the club's speaker system for the 5th time tonight:
"BORDERLINE BORDERLINE BORDERLINE/LOVE ME TIL I JUST CAN'T SEE."
And suddenly, I start to wonder: What does that mean anyway? 

"LOVE ME TIL I JUST CAN'T SEE"

What?

Screw me so much my eyes pop out, I go blind, end up walking down 2nd Avenue
crazy, horny, naked and blind? What?

There'...Read more of this...

by Hahn, Kimiko
...leg. 
Where do the gone things go 
when the child is old enough 
to walk herself to school, 
her playmates already 
pumping so high the swing hiccups?...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...at all.

 One graveyard had tall fir trees growing in it, and the

grass was kept Peter Pan green all year round by pumping

water up from the creek, and the graveyard had fine marble

headstones and statues and tombs.

 The other graveyard was for the poor and it had no trees

and the grass turned a flat-tire brown in the summer and

stayed that way until the rain, like a mechanic, began in the

late autumn.

 There were no fancy headstones for the poor dead....Read more of this...



by Angelou, Maya
..., I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'...Read more of this...

by Joyce, James
...r>


Lift it, Hosty, lift it, ye devil, ye! up with the rann,
 the rhyming rann!

It was during some fresh water garden pumping
Or, according to the Nursing Mirror, while admiring the monkeys
That our heavyweight heathen Humpharey
Made bold a maid to woo
 (Chorus) Woohoo, what'll she doo!
 The general lost her maidenloo!

He ought to blush for himself, the old hayheaded philosopher,
For to go and shove himself that way on top of her.
Begob, he's the crux of the catalogue
...Read more of this...

by Merwin, W S
...fire engine came and parked
in the shadow of the big poplar tree
of Fourth Street one night
keeping its engine running
pumping oxygen to the old woman
in the basement
when she died the red lights went on burning...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...time was never one of God's promises; but back 
 and forth, live and die, burn and be damned,
The great heart beating, pumping into our arteries His 
 terrible life.
 He is beautiful beyond belief.
And we, God's apes--or tragic children--share in the beauty.
 We see it above our torment, that's what life's for.
He is no God of love, no justice of a little city like Dante's
 Florence, no anthropoid God
Making commandments,: this is the God who does not care
 a...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...er – left the jockey where he lay – 
And they fell and rolled and galloped down the crooked course and rocky, 
Till the pumping of the Screamer could be heard a mile away. 
But he kept his legs and galloped; he was used to rugged courses, 
And he lumbered down the gully till the ridge began to quake: 
And he ploughed along the siding, raising earth till other horses 
An' their riders, too, were blinded by the dust-cloud in his wake. 

From the ruck he'd struggled slow...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...it all, if I ever get back again?

We've bidden good-bye to life in a cage, we're finished with pushing a pen;
They're pumping us full of bellicose rage, they're showing us how to be men.
We're only beginning to find ourselves; we're wonders of brawn and thew;
But when we go back to our Sissy jobs, -- oh, what are we going to do?

For shoulders curved with the counter stoop will be carried erect and square;
And faces white from the office light will be bronzed by the ope...Read more of this...

by Pastan, Linda
...ept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye....Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...Think of the difference it made! 
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels; 
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past 
and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well: 
larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast 
of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings! 
Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually 
he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling 
into that hot eye. Who cares that feel back to the sea? 
See him acclaiming the sun and...Read more of this...

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