Famous Reservation Poems by Famous Poets

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

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And One For My Dame

...on a three-day drunk,
he typed out complex itineraries, packed his trunk,

his matched luggage
and pocketed a confirmed reservation,
his heart already pushing over the red routes of the nation.

I sit at my desk
each night with no place to go,
opening thee wrinkled maps of Milwaukee and Buffalo,

the whole U.S.,
its cemeteries, its arbitrary time zones,
through routes like small veins, capitals like small stones.

He died on the road,
his heart pushed from neck to back,
his w...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne


Avons Harvest

...traught— 
I mean distrait. I don’t know what I mean.
I only know that I am at your service, 
Always, yet with a special reservation 
That you may deem eccentric. All the same 
Unless your living dead man comes to life, 
Or is less indiscriminately dead,
I shall go home.” 

“No, you will not go home,” 
Said Avon; “or I beg that you will not.” 
So saying, he went slowly to the door 
And turned the key. “Forgive me and my manners,
But I would be alone with you this evening. 
The...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Beowulf (Modern English)

...the beer-hall. (ll. 1076-94)

Then on both sides, they plighted their troth,
fixed by this peaceful pledge. Without reservation,
Finn swore by oaths all this to Hengest,
that he would hold those woeful survivors
in honor, by the judgment of his advisers,
so that no man, by word or by deed,
should break the compact, nor through malicious works
ever begrudge it—even though they now followed
the killer of their own ring-giver, prince-less,
when it was very much neces...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Custer

...of Love.



III.
The avaricious and encroaching rail
Seized the wide fields which knew the Indians' trail.
Back to the reservations in the West
The native owners of the land were pressed, 
And selfish cities, harbingers of want, 
Shut from their vision each accustomed haunt.
Yet hungry Progress, never satisfied, 
Gazed on the western plains, and gazing, longed and sighed.



IV.
As some strange bullock in a pasture field
Compels the herds to fear him, and to yield
The juicy ...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

Table Song

...gives me pleasure;
For of all that earth e'er lends,

'Tis the sweetest treasure.
Therefore solemnly I swear,

With no reservation,
That maliciously I'll ne'er

Leave my present station.

Now that here we're gather'd round,

Chasing cares and slumbers,
Let, methought, the goblet sound

To the bard's glad numbers!
Many a hundred mile away,

Go those we love dearly;
Therefore let us here to-day

Make the glass ring clearly!

Here's His health, through Whom we live!

I that fai...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang


The Curtain

...d sigh.
For a while we close the immense index of images

 which is
Our lives--for instance, the child on the Mescalero reservation

 in New Mexico in 1966
Sitting naked in the dirt outside his family's hut of tin and

 cardboard,
Covered with sores, unable to speak. But of course the child is

 here with us now,
We cannot close the index. How will we survive? We don't and

 cannot know.
Beyond the horizon a great unceasing noise is undeniable. The

 machine
May break through...Read more of this...
by Carruth, Hayden

The Evil Seekers

...must die a little,
have a book of matches go off in your hand,
see your best friend copying your exam,
visit an Indian reservation and see
their plastic feathers,
the dead dream.
One must be a prisoner just once to hear
the lock twist into his gut.
After all that
one is free to grasp at the trees, the stones,
the sky, the birds that make sense out of air.
But even in a telephone booth
evil can seep out of the receiver
and we must cover it with a mattress,
and then tear it fr...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

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