Famous Skating Poems by Famous Poets

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

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For Bartleby The Scrivener

by Billy Collins
 "Every time we get a big gale around here
 some people just refuse to batten down."

we estimate that

ice skating into a sixty
mile an hour wind, fully exerting
the legs and swinging arms

you will be pushed backward
an inch every twenty minutes.

in a few days, depending on
the size of the lake,
the backs of your skates
will touch land.

you will then fall on your...Read more of this...

The unquiet city

by Chris Mansell
 we are succulents
our cool jade arms open
over clean tables our fine bone
china minds pull the strings
of our tongues together we plait
our thoughts with the television
back through the aerials and
transmission towers prodding
through the literal fog
the mechanics of which distance
does not startle us or the ears
pretend to hear the telephone
the page also wearies
us we have taken the meaning
out of things by...Read more of this...

Baby Vamps

by Carl Sandburg
 BABY vamps, is it harder work than it used to be?
Are the new soda parlors worse than the old time saloons?
 Baby vamps, do you have jobs in the day time or is this all you do? do you come out only at night?
In the winter at the skating rinks, in the summer at the roller coaster parks,
Wherever figure...Read more of this...

Some Foreign Letters

by Anne Sexton
 I knew you forever and you were always old,
soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold
me for sitting up late, reading your letters,
as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me.
You posted them first in London, wearing furs
and a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety.
I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day,
where you guided...Read more of this...

Homer Clapp

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Often Aner Clute at the gate
Refused me the parting kiss,
Saying we should be engaged before that;
And just with a distant clasp of the hand
She bade me good-night, as I brought her home
From the skating rink or the revival.
No sooner did my departing footsteps die away
Than Lucius Atherton,
(So I learned when Aner went to Peoria)
Stole in at her window, or...Read more of this...

Of Modern Poetry

by Wallace Stevens
The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what 
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and...Read more of this...

The Worst And The Best

by Charles Bukowski
 in the hospitals and jails
it's the worst
in madhouses
it's the worst
in penthouses 
it's the worst
in skid row flophouses
it's the worst
at poetry readings
at rock concerts
at benefits for the disabled
it's the worst
at funerals
at weddings
it's the worst
at parades
at skating rinks
at sexual orgies
it's the worst
at midnight
at 3 a.m.
at 5:45 p.m.
it's the worst 
falling through the sky
firing squads
that's the best 
thinking of India
looking at popcorn...Read more of this...

Dream Song 117: Disturbed when Henrys love returned with a hubby

by John Berryman
 Disturbed, when Henry's love returned with a hubby,-”
I see that, Henry, I don't put that down,-”
he thought he had to think
or with a razor like a skating-rink
have more to say or more to them downtown
in the Christmas season, like a hobby.

Their letters will, released, shake the mapped world 
at some point, in the National Geographic.
(Friend, that hurt.)
It's horrible how...Read more of this...

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