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Famous Shirts Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...flown from nests,

The neon lights of Leeds last night still

Sovereign in my sights, limousines and

Pink baloons, tee shirts with green stencilled

Dates of wedding days to come, the worn dance floor,

Jingling arcades where chrome fendered fruit machines

Rest on plush carpets like the ghosts of fifties Chevies,

Dreams for sale on boulevards where forget-me-nots

Are flowing through the hyaline summer air.

I stood with you in Kings Cross on Thursday night

Waiting for a ...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry



...ought from far-ways, adornments laden there—
I’ve never heard of a ship equipped more fit
with war-weapons and battle-shirts,
with swords and with sarks. Many treasures
lay in his lap, which were supposed
to float far away with him into the flood’s keeping. (ll. 32-42)

No lesser gifts did they furnish him,
than the wealth of their people, more than what they gave him,
when they sent him forth at the start,
alone over the waves, while still a baby. (ll. 43-46)

Ne...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...are 
they? They move about her yard 
as though it were theirs. Are they 
the sons of her sons? They've 
taken off their shirts, and she 
sees they're not boys at all -- 
a dark smudge of hair rises 
along the belly of one --, and now 
they have the dog down thrashing 
on his back, snarling and flashing 
his teeth, and they're laughing.

AFTER DINNER

She's eaten dinner talking 
back to the television, she's 
had coffee and brandy, done 
the dishes and drifted into 
and out of...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip
...et place
in the big willow
hoppers:
a battle formation.
Most warlike
of defilades-
with men
in the market stalls,
white shirts
in the soup-greens,
artichoke field marshals,
close-order conclaves,
commands, detonations,
and voices,
a crashing of crate staves.

And
Maria
come
down
with her hamper
to
make trial
of an artichoke:
she reflects, she examines,
she candles them up to the light like an egg,
never flinching;
she bargains,
she tumbles her prize
in a market bag
among shoe...Read more of this...
by Neruda, Pablo
...lize their dream 
The artichoke army 
In formation. 
Never was it so military 
Like on parade. 
The men 
In their white shirts 
Among the vegetables 
Were 
The Marshals 
Of the artichokes 
Lines in close order 
Command voices, 
And the bang 
Of a falling box. 

But 
Then 
Maria 
Comes 
With her basket 
She chooses 
An artichoke, 
She's not afraid of it. 
She examines it, she observes it 
Up against the light like it was an egg, 
She buys it, 
She mixes it up 
In her handbag 
...Read more of this...
by Neruda, Pablo



...half a dozen plants, in-

cluding a peach tree growing in a coffee can. Their closet

was stuffed with food. Along with shirts, suits and dresses,

were canned goods, eggs and cooking oil.

 My friend told me that she was a very fine cook. That

she could really cook up a good meal, fancy dishes, too, on

that single hot plate, next to the peach tree.

 They had a good world going for them. He had such a soft

voice and manner that he worked as a private nurse for rich

menta...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard
...ulders of the grain elevators—
The flame sprockets of the sheet steel mills
And the men in the rolling mills with their shirts off
Playing their flesh arms against the twisting wrists of steel:
 what brothers these
 in the dark
 of a thousand years?. . .
A headlight searches a snowstorm.
A funnel of white light shoots from over the pilot of the Pioneer Limited crossing Wisconsin.

In the morning hours, in the dawn,
The sun puts out the stars of the sky
And the headlight of th...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...waist,
hiking near Russian River on June first
'79: Iva's five-and-a-half.
While she was almost twenty, wearing black
T-shirts in D.C., where we hadn't met.
You lay your palm, my love, on my flat chest.
In lines alive with what is not regret,
she takes her own path past, doesn't turn back.
Persistently, on paper, we exist.

Persistently, on paper, we exist.
You'd touch me if you could, but you're, in fact,
three thousand miles away. And my intact
body is eighteen months paper...Read more of this...
by Hacker, Marilyn
...high school
you didn't ask too many questions.
You could tell who'd been to last night's
big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallway.
You didn't have to ask
and that's what cool was:
the ability to deduct
to know without asking.
And the pressure to simulate coolness
means not asking when you don't know,
which is why kids grow ever more stupid.


A yearbook's endpages, filled with promises
to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness
of a teenager's promise. No...Read more of this...
by Berman, David
...he proposes,
And by declining cut her. To wed; to smoke
No more; And have a wife at home to mend
The holes in socks and shirts
And underwear and so forth. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To wed for life;
To wed; perchance to fight; ay, there's the rub;
For in that married life what fights may come,
When we have honeymooning ceased
Must give us pause; there's the respect
That makes the joy of single life.
For who would bear her mother's scornful tongue,
Canned goods...Read more of this...
by Guest, Edgar Albert
...al disgrace.
And sure enough that animal was eminently famous
For masticating every rag of laundry round the place.
For shirts to skirts prodigiously it proved its powers of chewing;
The question of digestion seemed to matter not at all;
But you'll agree, I think with me, its limit of misdoing
Was reached the day it swallowed Missis Rooney's ould red shawl.

Now Missis Annie Rooney was a winsome widow women,
And many a bouncing boy had sought to make her change her name;
And ...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...orld a blessed riddance 
If I'd a drowned 'em all like kittens. 
And he the sot, so strong and proud, 
Who'd make white shirts of a mother's shroud, 
He laughs now, it's a joke to him, 
Though it's the gates of hell for Jim.

"I've had my heart burnt out like coal, 
And drops of blood wrung from my soul 
Day in, day out, in pain and tears, 
For five and twenty wretched years; 
And he, he's ate the fat and sweet, 
And loafed and spat at top of street, 
And drunk and leched fro...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John
...igh clouds,
and the more I look at the water,
which is like a talking picture,
the more I think of 1902
when workmen in shirts and caps
riveted this iron bridge together
across a thin channel joining two lakes
where wildflowers blow along the shore now
and pairs of swans float in the leafy coves.

1902--my mother was so tiny
she could have fit into one of those oval
baskets for holding apples,
which her mother could have lined with a soft cloth
and placed on the kitchen table...Read more of this...
by Collins, Billy
...he Twelve. Was between
the Police Marine Branch and Hotel Venezuelana
one Sunday at noon. Young men without flags
using shirts, their chests waiting for holes.
They kept marching into the mountains, and their
noise ceased as foam sinks into sand.
They sank in the bright hills like rain, every one
with his own nimbus, leaving shirts in the streets,
and the echo of power at the end of the street.
Propeller-blade fans turn over the Senate;
the judges, they say, still sweat in ca...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek
...-day, 
And all our things were drying; 
The storm came roaring through the lines,
And set them all a flying; 
I saw the shirts and petticoats 
Go riding off like witches;
I lost, ah! bitterly I wept,--
I lost my Sunday breeches!

I saw them straddling through the air, 
Alas! too late to win them; 
I saw them chase the clouds, as if 
The devil had been in them; 
They were my darlings and my pride, 
My boyhood's only riches,--
"Farewell, farewell," I faintly cried,--
"My breech...Read more of this...
by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...garish

Friday night in the Square, pink sequins dazzle

And dance on clubbers bare to the midriff

Young men in crisp shirts and pressed pants

‘Dress code smart’ gyrate to ‘Sex Bomb, Sex Bomb’

And sing along its lyrics to the throng of which I’m one

My shorts, shoulder bag and white beard

Making me stand out in the teeming swarm

Of teens and twenties this foetid Friday night

On my way from the ward where our son paces

And fulminates I throw myself into the drowning

...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
..., the pity!
Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and sandals,
And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the yellow candles;
One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles,
And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention of scandals.
Bang, whang, whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife.
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...hrough office buildings and orthopedic
 shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling....Read more of this...
by Neruda, Pablo
...go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I...Read more of this...
by Joseph, Jenny
...floor to mop
The food to shop
Then the chicken to fry
The baby to dry
I got company to feed
The garden to weed
I've got shirts to press
The tots to dress
The can to be cut
I gotta clean up this hut
Then see about the sick
And the cotton to pick.

Shine on me, sunshine
Rain on me, rain
Fall softly, dewdrops
And cool my brow again.

Storm, blow me from here
With your fiercest wind
Let me float across the sky
'Til I can rest again.

Fall gently, snowflakes
Cover me with white
Co...Read more of this...
by Angelou, Maya

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry