Famous Selling Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Selling poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous selling poems. These examples illustrate what a famous selling poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Sexton, Anne
...A born salesman,
my father made all his dough
by selling wool to Fieldcrest, Woolrich and Faribo.
A born talker,
he could sell one hundred wet-down bales
of that white stuff. He could clock the miles and the sales
and make it pay.
At home each sentence he would utter
had first pleased the buyer who'd paid him off in butter.
Each word
had been tried over and over, at any rate,
on the man ...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...iles
beside him while the bright world
unfurled around them: filling stations, stands
of fruits and vegetables, a kiosk selling trinkets
from Mexico and the Philippines. It was all
so actual and Western, it was a new creation
coming into being, like the music of Charlie Parker
someone later called "glad," though that day
I would have said silent, "the silent music
of Charlie Parker." Howard said nothing.
He paid the driver and helped Bird up two flights
to their r...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...d the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine,
I said, “There aren’t enough to be worth while.”
“I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over.”
“You could look.
But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”
Pasture they s...Read more of this...
by
Atwood, Margaret
...g
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I've a choice
of how, and I'll take the money.
I do give value.
Like preachers, I sell vision,
like perfume ads, desire
or its facsimile. Li...Read more of this...
by
Pound, Ezra
...ghteen months;
"The hardest nut I had to crack
"Was Dr. Dundas.
"I never mentioned a man but with the view
"Of selling my own works.
"The tip's a good one, as for literature
"It gives no man a sinecure."
And no one knows, at sight a masterpiece.
And give up verse, my boy,
There's nothing in it."
* * *
Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me:
Don't kick against the pricks,
Accept opinion. The "Nineties" tried your game
And died, there'...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...he house a fraud on the world,
A treacherous lure to young men, raising hopes
Of a dowry not to be had;
And a man while selling his vote
Should get enough from the people's betrayal
To wall the whole of his family in.
He vexed my life till I went back home
And lived like an old maid till I died,
Keeping house for father....Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...person really soiled with trade
I ever stumbled on in old New Hampshire
Was someone who had just come back ashamed
From selling things in California.
He'd built a noble mansard roof with balls
On turrets, like Constantinople, deep
In woods some ten miles from a railroad station,
As if to put forever out of mind
The hope of being, as we say, received.
I found him standing at the close of day
Inside the threshold of his open barn,
Like a lone actor on a gloomy stage—
An...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...hey don't have to dirty their hands in
slaughterhouses or washing
dishes in grease joints or
driving cabs or pimping or selling pot.
this gives them time to understand
Life.
they walk in with their cocktail glass
held about heart high
and when they drink they just
sip.
you are drinking green beer which you
brought with you
because you have found out through the years
that rich bastards are tight-
they use 5 cent stamps instead of airmail
they promise to have al...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...aid. "I'm curious about the trout stream you
have for sale. Can you tell me something about it? How are
you selling it?"
"We're selling it by the foot length. You can buy as little
as you want or you can buy all we've got left. A man came in
here this morning and bought 563 feet. He's going to give it
to his niece for a birthday present, " the salesman said.
"We're selling the waterfalls separately of course, and
the trees and birds, fl...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...ot moving as fast. Maybe she had strawberries in her
head.
"Whoa!" I shouted. "Enough is enough! I'm not selling
newspapers!"
The doe stopped in her tracks, twenty-five feet away and
turned and went down around the eucalyptus tree.
Well, that's how it's gone now for days and days. I wake
up just before they come. I wake up for them in the same
manner as I do for the dawn and the sunrise. Suddenly know-
ing they're on their way.
...Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...trong earnings. Marvin Bell
ended the day unchanged. Analyst Richard Howard
recommended buying May Swenson and selling Anne Sexton.
In the old days, you liked either Walt Whitman or Anne Sexton,
not both. Ted Berrigan changed that just by going to a ballgame with
Marianne Moore.
And one day Philip Levine looked in the mirror and saw Marvin Bell....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...of new comers, or the anchor-lifters of the departing,
Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings, or shops selling goods from the rest
of
the
earth,
Nor the place of the best libraries and schools—nor the place where money is plentiest,
Nor the place of the most numerous population.
Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards;
Where the city stands that is beloved by these, and loves them in return, and understands
them;
Where...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...ess?
It is not wealth, it is not fame,
Nor rank, nor power nor honoured name.
It is not triumph in the Arts -
Best-selling books or leading parts.
It is not plaudits of the crowd,
The flame of flags, processions proud.
The panegyrics of the Press
are but the mirage of Success.
You may have all of them, my friend,
Yet be a failure in the end.
I've know proud Presidents of banks
Who've fought their way up from the ranks,
And party leaders of renown
Who pla...Read more of this...
by
Jeffers, Robinson
...I. Reference to a Passage in Plutarch's Life of Sulla
The people buying and selling, consuming pleasures, talking in the archways,
Were all suddenly struck quiet
And ran from under stone to look up at the sky: so shrill and mournful,
So fierce and final, a brazen
Pealing of trumpets high up in the air, in the summer blue over Tuscany.
They marvelled; the soothsayers answered:
"Although the Gods are little troubled toward men, at...Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
...And in the faces of the spectators there was a pitiful air,
Yet they were orderly in every way,
And newspaper boys were selling publications without delay.
Present in the procession was Lord Playfair,
And Bailie Walcot was also there,
Also Mr Macpherson of Edinboro-
And all seemingly to be in profound sorrow.
The supporters of the coffin were the Earl Rosebery,
And the Right Honourable Earl of Kimberley,
And the Right Honourable Sir W. Vernon he was there,
And...Read more of this...
by
Masefield, John
...>"
"His mother's gone inside to bargain,
Run in and tell her , Polly Margin,
And tell her poacher Kane is tipsy
And selling Jimmy to a gipsy."
"Run in to Mrs. Jaggard, Ellen,
Or else, dear knows, there'll be no tellin',
And don't dare leave yer till you've fount her,
You'll find her at the linen counter."
I told a tale, to Jim's delight
Of where the tom-cats go by night,
And how when moonlight came they went
Among the chimneys black and bent,
From roo...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...he gulls whirled about, mindless yet distracted. Old
ladies in their 70's and 80's sat on the benches and discussed selling real estate left
behind by husbands long ago killed by the pace and stupidity of survival. For it all,
there was peace in the air and we walked about and stretched on the lawns and didn't say
much. It simply felt good being together. I bought a couple of sandwiches, some chips and
drinks and we sat on the sand eating. Then I held Cass...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...gives them the advantage in the trade.
I can't get back the feet in any case."
"But your flowers, man, you're selling out your flowers."
"Yes, that's one way to put it--all the flowers
Of every kind everywhere in this region
For the next forty summers--call it forty.
But I'm not selling those, I'm giving them,
They never earned me so much as one cent:
Money can't pay me for the loss of them.
No, the five hundred was the sum they named
To pay the ...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...en the rocks he couldn't move,
Few farms changed hands; so rather than spend years
Trying to sell his farm and then not selling,
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And bought the telescope with what it came to.
He had been heard to say by several:
`The best thing that we're put here for's to see;
The strongest thing that's given us to see with's
A telescope. Someone in every town
Seems to me owes it to the town to keep one.
In Littleton it might as we...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...d forth out of affairs—out of commerce, shops, law, science, work, forms,
clothes, the house, medicine, print, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying.
Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem;
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.
O I have been dilatory and dumb;
I should have made my way straight to you long ago;
I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I...Read more of this...
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