Famous Shack Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Shack poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous shack poems. These examples illustrate what a famous shack poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Bukowski, Charles
...with an Apple Macintosh
you can't run Radio Shack programs
in its disc drive.
nor can a Commodore 64
drive read a file
you have created on an
IBM Personal Computer.
both Kaypro and Osborne computers use
the CP/M operating system
but can't read each other's
handwriting
for they format (write
on) discs in different
ways.
the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but
can't use most programs produced for
the...Read more of this...
by
Wright, James
...Near the dry river's water-mark we found
Your brother Minnegan,
Flopped like a fish against the muddy ground.
Beany, the kid whose yellow hair turns green,
Told me to find you, even if the rain,
And tell you he was drowned.
I hid behind the chassis on the bank,
The wreck of someone's Ford:
I was afraid to come and wake you drunk:
You told me on...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...are dim,
While mine laugh out in glee,
And though I ought to envy him,
I think he envies me.
He has a chateau, I a shack,
And humble I should be
To see his stately Cadillac
Beside my jalopy.
With chain of gold his belly's girt,
His beard is barber trim;
Yet bristle-chinned with ragged shirt,
I do not envy Jim.
My brother is a man of weight;
For every civic plum
He grabs within one pie of state,
While I am just a bum.
Last Winter he was near to croak
With gas...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...I have heaps of rugged health,
And life seems mighty good.
So when my class-mates come to spend
A week-end in my shack,
With lake and wood at journey's end
--They envy Jack....Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...railroad yard in San Jose
I wandered desolate
in front of a tank factory
and sat on a bench
near the switchman's shack.
A flower lay on the hay on
the asphalt highway
--the dread hay flower
I thought--It had a
brittle black stem and
corolla of yellowish dirty
spikes like Jesus' inchlong
crown, and a soiled
dry center cotton tuft
like a used shaving brush
that's been lying under
the garage for a year.
Yellow, yellow flower, and
flower of i...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...ailroad yard in San Jose
I wandered desolate
in front of a tank factory
and sat on a bench
near the switchman's shack.
A flower lay on the hay on
the asphalt highway
--the dread hay flower
I thought--It had a
brittle black stem and
corolla of yellowish dirty
spikes like Jesus' inchlong
crown, and a soiled
dry center cotton tuft
like a used shaving brush
that's been lying under
the garage for a year.
Yellow, yellow flower, and
fl...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...h's center making mountains,
Or pent up waters that cut them through.
Do you remember the iron band
The blacksmith, Shack Dye, welded
Around the oak on Bennet's lawn,
From which to swing a hammock,
That daughter Janet might repose in, reading
On summer afternoons?
And that the growing tree at last
Sundered the iron band?
But not a cell in all the tree
Knew aught save that it thrilled with life,
Nor cared because the hammock fell
In the dust with Milton's poems....Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
..."You should hear her sing;
They've got the cabin next to mine, an like a bird in Spring,
She fills that tumble-down old shack wi' simple melodee."
"Maybe she sing a song for us," said Montreal Maree.
Now I don't hold wi' mushy stuff, tear-jerkin' ain't my line,
Yet somehow that kid's singin' sent the shivers down my spine;
An' all them salted sourdoughs sighed, an' every eye was dim
For what she sang upon the bar was just a simple hymn;
Somethin' about "Abide with m...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...I never killed a bear because
I always thought them critters was
So kindo' cute;
Though round my shack they often came,
I'd raise my rifle and take aim,
But couldn't shoot.
Yet there was one full six-feet tall
Who came each night and gobbled all
The grub in sight;
On my pet garden truck he'd feast,
Until I thought I must at least
Give him a fight.
I put some corn mush in a pan;
He lapped it swiftly down and ran
With bruin glee;
A second day...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...bably had looked a lot better to George
than the wild side of the Santa Lucia Mountains.
My friend's place was a shack right beside a huge fire-
place where there had once been a great mansion during the
1920s, built by a famous movie actor. The mansion was built
before there was even a road down at Big Sur. The mansion
had been brought over the mountains on the backs of mules,
strung out like ants, bringing visions of the good life to the
poison oak, the...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...half-assed pioneer in a country
that not many wanted to live in because it was poor and ugly
and horrible, He built a shack, this was in 1876, on a little
creek that drained a worthless hill. After a while the creek
was called Hayman Creek.
Mr. Hayman did not know how to read or write and considered
himself better for it. Mr. Hayman did odd jobs for years
and years and years and years.
Your mule's broke?
Get Mr. Hayman to fix it.
...Read more of this...
by
Estep, Maggie
...that
You ain't ****
You suck
I hate you
but I love you
I love you because I hate you
Can I have your children?
Will you shack up with me?
Oh sure
I'll shack up with you
I love stalkers
Especially when they hate me
But you knew that
That's why you stalk me
You're not fooled by my clever ruse
***** goddess? I think not
I'm just a sucker for punishment
So punish me
Spank me
Dominate my sock drawer
And stalk me
Don't stalk Jodie Foster, David Letterman or John S. Hall
D...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...e
I fain would have you know him for the Nimrod that he was.
Now Skipper Grey and Deacon White were sitting in the shack,
And sampling of the whisky that pertained to Sheriff Black.
Said Skipper Grey: "I want to say a word about this Brown:
The piker's sticking out his chest as if he owned the town."
Said Sheriff Black: "he has no lack of frigorated cheek;
He called himself a Sourdough when he'd just been here a week."
Said Deacon White: "Methinks you're righ...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...at suddenly inadequate stain
of lightning belling around
our skin. Bodies in air
we raced for the empty lobsterman-shack.
It was yellow inside, the sound
of the underwing of the sun. I swear,
I most solemnly swear, on all the bric-a-brac
of summer loves, I know
you not....Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...nough it looks
Ever to grind to soil for grass.
(The way it is will do for moss.)
There he had built his stolen shack.
It had to be a stolen shack
Because of the fears of fire and logs
That trouble the sleep of lumber folk:
Visions of half the world burned black
And the sun shrunken yellow in smoke.
We know who when they come to town
Bring berries under the wagon seat,
Or a basket of eggs between their feet;
What this man brought in a cotton sack
Was gum, the ...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...ion.
When we awakened we drove back to my place and I cooked a dinner. After dinner I suggested
to Cass that we shack together. She waited a long time, looking at me, then she slowly
said, "No." I drove her back to the bar, bought her a drink and walked out. I
found a job as a parker in a factory the next day and the rest of the week went to
working. I was too tired to get about much but that Friday night I did get to the West End
Bar. I sat and wa...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...This is the song of the parson's son, as he squats in his shack alone,
On the wild, weird nights, when the Northern Lights shoot up from the frozen zone,
And it's sixty below, and couched in the snow the hungry huskies moan:
"I'm one of the Arctic brotherhood, I'm an old-time pioneer.
I came with the first -- O God! how I've cursed this Yukon -- but still I'm here.
I've sweated athirst in its summer heat, ...Read more of this...
by
Pushkin, Alexander
...bless his hovel,
Death - nothing other - did he crave.
So once, upon a falling night, he
Was bowing by his wilted shack
With meekest prayer to the Almighty.
The grove was turning slowly black;
Above the lake a mist was lifting;
Through milky clouds across the sky
The ruddy moon was softly drifting,
When water drew the friar's eye...
He's looking puzzled, full of trouble,
Of fear he cannot quite explain,
He sees the waves begin to bubble
And suddenly gro...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...br>
RED LIP
Seventeen years later I sat down on a rock. It was under a
tree next to an old abandoned shack that had a sheriff's
notice nailed like a funeral wreath to the front door.
NO TRESPASSING
4/17 OF A HAIKU
Many rivers had flowed past those seventeen years, and
thousands of trout, and now beside the highway and the sheriff's
notice flowed yet another river, the Klamath, and I was
trying to get thirty-five miles downstream to Ste...Read more of this...
by
Edson, Russell
...the arch called youth.
Soon, down the road, where one almost misses the life
lived beyond the flower, is a small shack labeled, you.
And it is here the future lives in the several postures of
arm on windowsill, cheek on this; elbows on knees, face in
the hands; sometimes the head thrown back, eyes staring into
the ceiling . . . This into nothing down the long day's arc . . ....Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Shack poems.