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Famous Shiny Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)
...tied to this stem. 

June is a yellow cup I'll not name; August 
the over-heavy one. And here are— 
russet and shiny, all but March. And March? 
Ah, March— 
 Flowers are a tiresome pastime. 
One has a wish to shake them from their pots 
root and stem, for the sun to gnaw. 

Walk out again into the cold and saunter home 
to the fire. This day has blossomed long enough. 
I have wiped out the red night and lit a blaze 
instead which will at least war...Read more of this...



by Spenser, Edmund
...n air,
And heaven than fire, appears more pure and fair.

Look thou no further, but affix thine eye
On that bright, shiny, round, still moving mass,
The house of blessed gods, which men call sky,
All sow'd with glist'ring stars more thick than grass,
Whereof each other doth in brightness pass,
But those two most, which ruling night and day,
As king and queen, the heavens' empire sway;

And tell me then, what hast thou ever seen
That to their beauty may compared be,
Or can...Read more of this...

by Field, Eugene
...uplandish ways;
His raiment was of dusty gray, and perched above his lugs
There ben the very latest style of blacke and shiny pluggs;
His nose ben like a vulture beake, his blie ben swart of hue,
And curly ben ye whiskers through ye which ye zephyrs blewe;
Of all ye een that ben yseene in countries far or nigh,
None nonywhere colde hold compare unto that straunger's eye;
It was an eye of soche a kind as never ben on sleepe,
Nor did it gleam with kindly beame, nor did not use ...Read more of this...

by Knight, Etheridge
...Shiny record albums scattered over
the living room floor, reflecting light
from the lamp, sharp reflections that hurt
my eyes as I watch you, squatting among the platters, 
the beer foam making mustaches on your lips.

And, too,
the shadows on your cheeks from your long lashes
fascinate me--almost as much as the dimples
in your cheeks, your arms and your...Read more of this...

by Hikmet, Nazim
...Oh, both my shoes are shiny new,
And pristine is my hat;
My dress is 1922....
My life is all like that....Read more of this...



by Aldington, Richard
...men, 
The shop where I bought transfers, 
And the piano and gramaphone shop 
Where I used to stand 
Staring at the huge shiny pianos and at the pictures 
Of a white dog looking into a gramaphone. 

How dull and greasy and grey and sordid it was! 
On wet days -- it was always wet -- 
I used to kneel on a chair 
And look at it from the window. 

The dirty yellow trams 
Dragged noisily along 
With a clatter of wheels and bells 
And a humming of wires overhead. 
They ...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...rost on his back was hoar,
 And ever he crooned and chanted as if he never would tire:--

"I panned and I panned in the shiny sand, and I sniped on the river bar;
But I know, I know, that it's down below that the golden treasures are;
So I'll wait and wait till the floods abate, and I'll sink a shaft once more,
And I'd like to bet that I'll go home yet with a brass band playing before."

He was nigh as thin as a sliver, and he whined like a Moose-hide cur;
 So Clancy clot...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure,
 and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the 
 petal
 hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light
 and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall
 from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.

 I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead
 of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,
 of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes
 on the timid globe of an orange.

 I walked aroun...Read more of this...

by Parker, Dorothy
...If I had a shiny gun,
I could have a world of fun
Speeding bullets through the brains
Of the folk who give me pains;

Or had I some poison gas,
I could make the moments pass
Bumping off a number of
People whom I do not love.

But I have no lethal weapon-
Thus does Fate our pleasure step on!
So they still are quick and well
Who should be, by rights, in hell....Read more of this...

by Taylor, Edward
...a corkscrew
he produced one without a moment's hesitation.
And it was a corkscrew of the finest craftsmanship,
very shiny and bright not unlike the doctor himself.
"We'll be conducting our picnic under the great oak
beginning in just a few minutes, and if you'd care
to join us we'd be most honored. However, I understand
you have your obligations and responsibilities,
and if you would prefer to simply visit with us
from time to time, between patients, our invitatio...Read more of this...

by Alger, Julie Hill
...ture of the water buffalo 
and spoke its Khmer name once more. 

So today, when someone (my ex-
husband) sends me a shiny picture 
of a church in Santa Cruz that lost 
its steeple in the recent earthquake 
there's no reason at all 
for my throat to ache at the sight
of a Pacific-blue sky and an old church
three thousand miles away, because 
if I can only save enough money 

 I can go back there any time
and stay as long as I want. 

 -Julie Alger...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...he sides in soft slow-motion, 
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes. 
--For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains, 
aren't waterfalls yet, 
in a quick age or so, as ages go here, 
they probably will be. 
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling, 
the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships, 
slime-hung and barnacled. 

Think of the long trip home. 
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? 
Where should we ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...time to the old homestead, 
On her back she carried a bundle of rushes for rush-bottoming chairs, 
Her hair, straight, shiny, coarse, black, profuse, half-envelop’d her face,
Her step was free and elastic, and her voice sounded exquisitely as she spoke. 

My mother look’d in delight and amazement at the stranger, 
She look’d at the freshness of her tall-borne face, and full and pliant limbs, 
The more she look’d upon her, she loved her, 
Never before had she seen such wo...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...d figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
With the yellow face of Doom.

He does not rise in piteous haste
To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats,
and notes
Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one's throat, before
The hangman with his ...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...s are made of; 
I learned with what a rosy feeling 
Good ale makes floors seem like the ceiling, 
And how the moon give shiny light 
To lads as roll home singing by't. 
My blood did leap, my flesh did revel, 
Saul Kane was tokened to the devil. 

From '61 to'71 
I lived in disbelief of Heaven. 
I drunk, I fought, I poached, I whored, 
I did despite unto the Lord. 
I cursed, 'would make a man look pale, 
And nineteen times I went to gaol 

Now, friends, observe...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed 
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping 
of ...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...ezuma's treasure-hoard. 
Gold, like some finny harvest of the sea, 
Poured out knee deep around the rifted floors, 
Shiny and sparkling, -- arms and crowns and rings: 
Gold, sweet to toy with as beloved hair, -- 
To plunge the lustful, crawling fingers down, 
Arms elbow deep, and draw them out again, 
And watch the glinting metal trickle off, 
Even as at night some fisherman, home bound 
With speckled cargo in his hollow keel 
Caught off Campeche or the Isle of Pines, 
Di...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...em in the end.
The sun is down. I die. I make a death.

FIRST VOICE:
Who is he, this blue, furious boy,
Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?
He is looking so angrily!
He flew into the room, a shriek at his heel.
The blue color pales. He is human after all.
A red lotus opens in its bowl of blood;
They are stitching me up with silk, as if I were a material.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with i...Read more of this...

by Warren, Robert Penn
...eclosed. That last word was whispered. 
She never came back.The family
Sort of drifted off.Nobody wears shiny boots like that now.

But I know she is beautiful forever, and lives
In a beautiful house, far away.
She called my name once.I didn't even know she knew it....Read more of this...

by Simic, Charles
...has just rung
With a short, shrill echo,

A little boy hands the old,
Hard-faced woman

Bending low over the counter,
A shiny nickel for a cupcake.

Now only that shine, now
Only that lull abides.



That your gaze
Be merciful,

Sister, bride
Of my first hopeless insomnia.

Kind nurse, show me
The place of salves.

Teach me the song
That makes a man rise

His glass at dusk
Until a star dances in it.



Who are you? Are you anybody
A moonrock would recogniz...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs