Famous Small Town Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Small Town poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous small town poems. These examples illustrate what a famous small town poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Sandburg, Carl
...ee—I am a woman whose
Husband gives her a kiss once for ten
Times he throws it in my face, ‘You ****.’
If I go to a small town and him along
Or if I go to a big city and him along.
What of it? Am I better off?” She swept
The upstairs and came downstairs to fix
Dinner for the family....Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Robert
...r power to choose life and die--
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.
On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.
The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year--
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . .
Shaw's fathe...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...I went to Heaven --
'Twas a small Town --
Lit -- with a Ruby --
Lathed -- with Down --
Stiller -- than the fields
At the full Dew --
Beautiful -- as Pictures --
No Man drew.
People -- like the Moth --
Of Mechlin -- frames --
Duties -- of Gossamer --
And Eider -- names --
Almost -- contented --
I -- could be --
'Mong such unique
Society --...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...br> Just the once
you earn your doctorate in mismanagement.
So I was eighteen, once, fifty years ago,
a kid from a small town with big ideas.
Gatsby said if Detroit is your idea
of a small town you need another idea,
and I needed several. I retied my shoes, washed
my face, brushed my teeth with a furry tongue,
counted out my $11.80
on the broken bed, and decided the time
had come to mature. How else can I explain
voting for Adlai Stevenson once and once
a...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...re?"
he said.
"Go ahead."
"You crossed the border into Mexico, " he said. "You
rode your horse into a small town. The people knew who
you were and they were afraid of you. They knew you had
killed many men with that gun you wore at your side. The
town itself was so small that it didn't have a priest.
"When the rurales saw you, they left the town. Tough as
they were, they did not want to have anything to do with you.
The rurales...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...ed Lunch, Krafft-Ebing. We read Krafft-
Ebing aloud all the time as if he were Kraft dinner.
"The mayor of a small town in Eastern Portugal was seen
one morning pushing a wheelbarrow full of sex organs into
the city hall. He was of tainted family. He had a woman's
shoe in his back pocket. It had been there all night. " Things
like this make us laugh.
The woman who owns this cabin will come back in the aut-
umn. She's spending the summ...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...different incident with a similar name
In whose tale are hidden syllables
Of what happened so long before that
In some small town, one different summer....Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...ots, clicking,
Into the dangled boxes of glinting windows
Snapshots and selections, rejections, at angles, of shadows
A small town: a shop's sign - GARAGE, and then white gates
Where waiting cars wait with the unrest of trembling
Breathing hard and idling, until the slow~descent
Of the red cones of sunset: a dead march: a slow tread and heavy
Of the slowed horses of Apollo
- Until the slowed horses of Apollo go over the horizon
And all things are parked, slowly or willingly...Read more of this...
by
Doty, Mark
...center of the road,
head up like a missionary moving certainly
into the country of his hopes.
In the movies in this small town
I stopped for popcorn while you went ahead
to claim seats. When I entered the cool dark
I saw straight couples everywhere,
no single silhouette who might be you.
I walked those two aisles too small
to lose anyone and thought of a book
I read in seventh grade, "Stranger Than Science,"
in which a man simply walked away,
at a picnic, and wa...Read more of this...
by
Edson, Russell
...hing there comes a time called childhood, which
is simply a path leading through an archway called
adolescence. A small town there, past 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...Read more of this...
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