Famous Stick In Poems by Famous Poets

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

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To Brenda Williams ‘writing Against The Grain'

by Barry Tebb
 It was Karl Shapiro who wrote in his ‘Defence of Ignorance’ how many poets

Go mad or seem to be so and the majority think we should all be in jail

Or mental hospital and you have ended up in both places - fragile as bone china,

Your pale skin taut, your fingers clasped tight round a cup, sitting in a pool

Of...Read more of this...

The One-Legged Man

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Propped on a stick he viewed the August weald; 
Squat orchard trees and oasts with painted cowls; 
A homely, tangled hedge, a corn-stalked field, 
And sound of barking dogs and farmyard fowls. 

And he’d come home again to find it more
Desirable than ever it was before. 
How right it seemed that he should reach the span 
Of comfortable years...Read more of this...

A Stick Of Incense

by William Butler Yeats
 Whence did all that fury come?
From empty tomb or Virgin womb?
Saint Joseph thought the world would melt
But liked the way his finger smelt....Read more of this...

A Drowsy Day

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
The air is dark, the sky is gray,
The misty shadows come and go,
And here within my dusky room
Each chair looks ghostly in the gloom.
Outside the rain falls cold and slow—
Half-stinging drops, half-blinding spray.
Each slightest sound is magnified,
For drowsy quiet holds her reign;
The burnt stick in the fireplace breaks,
The nodding cat with start awakes,
And then to sleep drops off again,
Unheeding Towser...Read more of this...

Lip-Stick Liz

by Robert William Service
 Oh Lip-Stick Liz was in the biz, That's the oldest known in history;
She had a lot of fancy rags, Of her form she made no myst'ry.
She had a man, a fancy man, His name was Alexander,
And he used to beat her up because he couldn't understand her. 

Now Lip-Stick Liz she loved her man And she couldn't love no...Read more of this...

Song of My Cottage Unroofed By Autumn Gales

by Du Fu
 Eight month autumn high wind angry howl Sweep off my house on three layers thatch Thatch fly across river sprinkle river beside High ones catch stick great forest top Low ones float turn sink pool hollow South village mob children bully me old without strength Bear able to face to steal be robbers  Openly carry thatch...Read more of this...

Good-by and Keep Cold

by Robert Frost
 This saying good-by on the edge of the dark
And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark
Reminds me of all that can happen to harm
An orchard away at the end of the farm
All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.
I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,
I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse
By...Read more of this...

My Dogs My Boss

by Robert William Service
 Each day when it's anighing three
 Old Dick looks at the clock,
Then proudly brings my stick to me
 To mind me of our walk.
And in his doggy rapture he
 Does everything but talk.

But since I lack his zip and zest
 My old bones often tire;
And so I ventured to suggest
 Today we hug the fire.
But with what wailing he...Read more of this...

The Thousandth Man

by Rudyard Kipling
 One man in a thousand, Solomon says,
Will stick more close than a brother.
And it's worth while seeking him half your days
If you find him before the other.
Nine nundred and ninety-nine depend
On what the world sees in you,
But the Thousandth man will stand your friend
With the whole round world agin you.

'Tis neither promise nor prayer nor show
Will settle the finding...Read more of this...

The Stupid Jerk Im Obsessed With

by Maggie Estep
 The stupid jerk I'm obsessed with
stands so close to me
I can feel his breath
on my neck
and smell
the way he would smell
if we slept together
because he is the stupid jerk I'm obsessed with
and that is his primary function in life
to be a stupid jerk I can obsess over
and to talk to that dingy bimbette blonde 
as if he really wanted...Read more of this...

Myxomatosis

by Philip Larkin
 Caught in the center of a soundless field
While hot inexplicable hours go by
What trap is this? Where were its teeth concealed?
You seem to ask.
   I make a sharp reply,
Then clean my stick. I'm glad I can't explain
Just in what jaws you were to suppurate:
You may have thought things would come right again
If you could only keep quite...Read more of this...

S was Papas new Stick

by Edward Lear
S  was Papa's new Stick,Papa's new thumping Stick, To thump extremely wicked boys,Because it was so thick. ...Read more of this...

The Crooked Stick

by Elinor Wylie
 First Traveller: What's that lying in the dust? 
Second Traveller: A crooked stick. 
First Traveller: What's it worth, if you can trust to arithmetic? 
Second Traveller: Isn't this a riddle? 
First Traveller: No, a trick. 
Second Traveller:It's worthless, leave it where it lies. 
First Traveller: Wait; count ten; 
Rub a little dust upon your eyes; 
Now, look again. 
Second...Read more of this...

Before

by Robert Browning
 I.

Let them fight it out, friend! things have gone too far.
God must judge the couple: leave them as they are
---Whichever one's the guiltless, to his glory,
And whichever one the guilt's with, to my story!

II.

Why, you would not bid men, sunk in such a slough,
Strike no arm out further, stick and stink as now,
Leaving right and wrong to settle the...Read more of this...

Snow Whites Acne

by Denise Duhamel
 At first she was sure it was just a bit of dried strawberry juice,
or a fleck of her mother's red nail polish that had flaked off
when she'd patted her daughter to sleep the night before.
But as she scrubbed, Snow felt a bump, something festering
under the surface, like a tapeworm curled up and living
in her left cheek.
 Doc the Dwarf...Read more of this...

Grass

by Russell Edson
 The living room is overgrown with grass. It has 
come up around the furniture. It stretches through 
the dining room, past the swinging door into the 
kitchen. It extends for miles and miles into the 
walls . . .

 There's treasure in grass, things dropped or put 
there; a stick of rust that was once a penknife, a 
grave...Read more of this...

Gregory Corso

by Gregory Corso
 Budger of history Brake of time You Bomb
 Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you
 Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt the jawbone of an ass
 The bumpy club of One Million B.C. the mace the flail the axe
 Catapult Da Vinci tomahawk Cochise flintlock Kidd dagger Rathbone
 Ah and the sad desparate gun...Read more of this...

Dickeyville Grotto

by Mark Doty
 The priest never used blueprints, but worked all
the many designs out of his head.


Father Wilerus,
transplanted Alsatian,
built around
this plain Wisconsin

redbrick church
a coral-reef en-
crustation--meant,
the brochure says,

to glorify America
and heaven simul-
taneously. Thus:
Mary and Columbus

and the Sacred Heart
equally enthroned
in a fantasia of quartz
and seashells, broken

dishes, stalactites
and stick-shift knobs--
no separation
of nature and art

for Father Wilerus!
He's built fabulous blooms
--bristling mosaic tiles
bunched into chipped,

permanent roses---
and more...Read more of this...

Bush Christening

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 On the outer Barcoo where the churches are few, 
And men of religion are scanty, 
On a road never cross'd 'cept by folk that are lost, 
One Michael Magee had a shanty. 
Now this Mike was the dad of a ten year old lad, 
Plump, healthy, and stoutly conditioned; 
He was strong as the best, but poor Mike had...Read more of this...

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 TWELVE o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,
The street-lamp sputtered,
The street-lamp muttered,
The street-lamp said, “Regard that woman
Who hesitates...Read more of this...

The Criminal V

by Kahlil Gibran
 A young man of strong body, weakened by hunger, sat on the walker's portion of the street stretching his hand toward all who passed, begging and repeating his hand toward all who passed, begging and repeating the sad song of his defeat in life, while suffering from hunger and from humiliation. 

When night came, his lips and tongue were...Read more of this...

Camouflage

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Beside the bare and beaten track of travelling flocks and herds 
The woodpecker went tapping on, the postman of the birds, 
"I've got a letter here," he said, "that no one's understood, 
Addressed as follows: 'To the bird that's like a piece of wood.' 
"The soldier bird got very cross -- it wasn't meant for her; 
The spurwing plover...Read more of this...

The Blind Girl

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Kind Christians, pray list to me,
And I'll relate a sad story,
Concerning a little blind girl, only nine years of age,
Who lived with her father in a lonely cottage. 

Poor girl, she had never seen the blessed light of day,
Nor the beautiful fields of corn and hay,
Nor the sparrows, that lifted their heads at early morn
To bright Sol that does...Read more of this...

Accepted

by Elizabeth Jennings
 You are no longer young,
Nor are you very old.
There are homes where those belong.
You know you do not fit
When you observe the cold
Stares of those who sit

In bath-chairs or the park
(A stick, then, at their side)
Or find yourself in the dark
And see the lovers who,
In love and in their stride,
Don't even notice you.

This is a time to begin
Your life....Read more of this...

The Interrogation Of The Man Of Many Hearts

by Anne Sexton
 Who's she, that one in your arms?

She's the one I carried my bones to
and built a house that was just a cot
and built a life that was over an hour
and built a castle where no one lives
and built, in the end, a song
to go with the ceremony.

Why have you brought her here?
Why do you knock on my door
with your...Read more of this...

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