Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Shopping Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Berry, Wendell
...land flows to the sea.
Fine men and women die,
The fine old houses fall,
The fine old trees come down:
Highway and shopping mall
Still guarantee the right
And liberty to be
A peaceful murderer,
A murderous worshipper,
A slender glutton, Forgiving
No enemy, forgiven
By none, we live the death
Of liberty, become
What we have feared to be....Read more of this...



by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...Where the wary marsupial is hopping? 
Does he think that the snake and the platypus meet 
And "bail up" the folk who go shopping? 
And the boomerangs fly round the scared passer-by 
Who has come all this way to observe us. 
While the blackfellow launches a spear at his eye? 
-- No wonder His Lordship is nervous. 

Does he think that with callers he'll be overtasked, 
From a baronet down to a barber? 
Does he dream of the number of times he'll be asked 
"What he thinks...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...sidestreets under the trees 
with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. 
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, 
I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of 
your enumerations! 
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole fam- 
ilies shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives 
in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, 
Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the 
watermelons? 

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lone...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...nstruct
a marina here, one of the largest in the 
world, millions and billions of dollars, 
there is going to be a huge shopping
center, yachts and condominiums every-
where!"

"and to think," my woman says smiling, "that you've only
lived here for three years!"

"I still think," I say,
changing the subject,
"you ought to read Jeffers."...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...d and the

Shop have gone and Deidre has died and on the other side

The Co-op is long gone where we got your mother’s

Shopping once a week from.





54



Sugarbag blue

I called the colour

Of your knickers

As you stood over

The basket

We struggled

Back with.



Your eyes reflected

The image of me at ten

In my tomato-red tee-shirt

Looking at you in your

Washed-out flower-patterned

Frock.





55



Margaret, Leeds is bound with fog

This Friday in lat...Read more of this...



by Collins, Billy
...o and Giuseppe, who have begun
to resemble the two male characters
in my Italian for Beginners,
the ones who are always shopping
or inquiring about the times of trains,
and now I can hardly speak or write English.

I have made important pronouncements
in this remote limestone valley
with its trickle of a river,
stating that it seems hotter
today even than it was yesterday
and that swimming is very good for you,
very beneficial, you might say.
I also posed burning ques...Read more of this...

by Corso, Gregory
...of humanity High heels bend
 Hats whelming away Youth forgetting their combs
 Ladies not knowing what to do with their shopping bags
 Unperturbed gum machines Yet dangerous 3rd rail
 Ritz Brothers from the Bronx caught in the A train
 The smiling Schenley poster will always smile
 Impish death Satyr Bomb Bombdeath
 Turtles exploding over Istanbul
 The jaguar's flying foot
 soon to sink in arctic snow
 Penguins plunged against the Sphinx
 The top of the Empire state
 arrowed ...Read more of this...

by Taylor, Edward
...also extremely fragile.
People want to pet its long, shaggy coat.
These would be mostly whirling dervishes
out shopping for accessories.
When Lily winks they understand everything,
right down to the particle
of a butterfly's wing lodged
in her last good eye,
so the situation is avoided,
the potential for a cataclysm
is narrowly averted,
and the bumblebee lugs
its little bundle of shaved nerves
forward, on a mission
from some sick, young godhead....Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...t. I read 
slowly in The New York Times 
that poems are dying in Iowa, 
Missoula, on the outskirts of Reno, 
in the shopping galleries of Houston. 
We should all go to the grave 
of the unknown poet while the rain 
streaks our notebooks or stand 
for hours in the freezing winds 
off the lost books of our fathers 
or at least until we can no longer 
hold our pencils. Men keep coming 
in and going out, and two of them 
recall the great dirty fights 
between Willy Pe...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...and follow through the doors
up into the reading rooms,
please come flying.
We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping,
or play at a game of constantly being wrong
with a priceless set of vocabularies,
or we can bravely deplore, but please
please come flying.

With dynasties of negative constructions
darkening and dying around you,
with grammar that suddenly turns and shines
like flocks of sandpipers flying,
please come flying.

Come like a light...Read more of this...

by Harrison, Tony
...w she'd just popped out to get the tea.

I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven't both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there's your name 
and the disconnected number I still call....Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...r clothes were curtains 
hanging on the window of what had 
been your flesh and now was glass. 

Outside in Florida shopping plazas 
loudspeakers blared Christmas carols 
and palm trees were decked with blinking 
lights. Except by the tourist 
hotels, the beaches were empty. 

Pelicans with pregnant pouches 
flapped overhead like pterodactyls. 
In my mind I felt you die. 
First the pain lifted and then 
you flickered and went out. 


2.

I walk thr...Read more of this...

by Betjeman, John
...International,
Balancing bicycle leant on the verge.

Trace me your wheel-tracks, you fortunate bicycle,
Out of the shopping and into the dark,
Back down the avenue, back to the pottingshed,
Back to the house on the fringe of the park.

Golden the light on the locks of Myfanwy,
Golden the light on the book on her knee,
Finger marked pages of Rackham's Hans Anderson,
Time for the children to come down to tea.

Oh! Fullers angel-cake, Robertson’s marmalade,
Liberty ...Read more of this...

by Hacker, Marilyn
...an old-world friend moves into view?
The toddler and the stout
grey-haired woman walk out
of the small park toward the shopping streets
into a present tense
where what’s ineffaceable repeats
itself. Accidents.
I dash ahead, new whistle in my hand
She runs behind. The car. The almost-silent
thud. Gísela, prone, also silent, on the ground. 

Death is the scandal that was always hidden.
I never saw my grandmother again
Who took me home? Somebody did....Read more of this...

by Lehman, David
...one saw the stranger, who said his name was Marvin Bell, 
pour something into Donna's drink. "In the Walt Whitman 
Shopping Center, there you feel free," said Ted Berrigan, 
pulling on a Chesterfield. Everyone laughed, except T. S. Eliot. 

I asked for directions. "You turn right on Gertrude Stein,
then bear left. Three streetlights down you hang a Phil Levine 
and you're there," Jim said. When I arrived I saw Ted Berrigan 
with cigarette ash ...Read more of this...

by Duhamel, Denise
...ld sometimes say, "Snow darling,
why don't you pull back your hair? Show those pretty eyes?"
or "Come on, I'll take you shopping."
 Snow preferred
staying in her safe room, looking out of her window
at the deer leaping across the lawn. Or she'd practice
her dance moves with invisible princes. And the Queen,
busy being Queen, didn't like to push it....Read more of this...

by Guest, Edgar Albert
...When he himself might all these troubles shirk
With a bare refusal? Who would bundles bear,
And grunt and sweat under a shopping load?
Who would samples match; buy rats for hair,
Cart cheese and crackers home to serve at night
For lunch to feed your friends; play pedro
After tea; sing rag time songs, amusing
Friendly neighbors. Buy garden tools
To lend unto the same. Stay home at nights
In smoking coat and slippers and slink to bed
At ten o'clock to save the light bil...Read more of this...

by Larkin, Philip
...l chairs turning the ripped mags
Haven't come far. More like a local bus.
These outdoor clothes and half-filled shopping-bags
And faces restless and resigned, although
Every few minutes comes a kind of nurse

To fetch someone away: the rest refit
Cups back to saucers, cough, or glance below
Seats for dropped gloves or cards. Humans, caught
On ground curiously neutral, homes and names
Suddenly in abeyance; some are young,
Some old, but most at that vague age that c...Read more of this...

by Levis, Larry
...ith the pastel tassels on the shade
Of an unlit table lamp. Farther in, it feasted
On the decaying light of failing shopping centers;
It spilled into the older, tree-lined neighborhoods,
Into warm houses, sealing itself into books
Of bedtime stories read each night by fathers--
The books lying open to the flat, neglected
Light of dawn; & it settled like dust on windowsills
Downtown, filling the smug cafés, schools, 
Banks, offices, taverns, gymnasiums, hotels,
Newsstands,...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...body’s clothes,

Crying copiously

While he sewed.

When they cleared out

The chronic cases

Uncle Bob came home,

Shopping for Edna,

Doing the garden;

When the lodger left

Without a word, the police

Searched his room,

The garden shed,

Even the chest freezer.

Oesophageal cancer

Is very final.

John, his son, waiting

To take the house,

Departed for a month’s fishing

Until it was all over.



As a last rite

They put him in the LGI

But I spoke to th...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Shopping poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs