Famous Sticky Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Pastoral

by Kenneth Patchen
 The Dove walks with sticky feet
Upon the green crowns of the almond tree,
Its feathers smeared over with warmth
Like honey
That dips lazily down into the shadow ...

Anyone standing in that orchard.So filled with peace and sleep,
Would hardly have noticed the hill
Nearby
With its three strange wooden arms
Lifted above a throng of motionless people
- Above the helmets of Pilate's soldiers
Flashing like silver...Read more of this...

The Intruder

by Carolyn Kizer
 My mother-- preferring the strange to the tame:
Dove-note, bone marrow, deer dung,
Frog's belly distended with finny young,
Leaf-mould wilderness, hare-bell, toadstool,
Odd, small snakes loving through the leaves,
Metallic beetles rambling over stones: all
Wild and natural -flashed out her instinctive love,
and quick, she
Picked up the fluttering. bleeding bat the cat laid at her feet,
And held the little horror to the mirror, where
He...Read more of this...

Magna Carta

by Marriott Edgar
 I'll tell of the Magna Charter
As were signed at the Barons' command 
On Runningmead Island in t' middle of t' Thames 
By King John, as were known as "Lack Land." 

Some say it were wrong of the Barons 
Their will on the King so to thrust, 
But you'll see if you look at both sides of the case 
That...Read more of this...

Death Wants More Death

by Charles Bukowski
 death wants more death, and its webs are full:
I remember my father's garage, how child-like
I would brush the corpses of flies
from the windows they thought were escape-
their sticky, ugly, vibrant bodies
shouting like dumb crazy dogs against the glass
only to spin and flit
in that second larger than hell or heaven
onto the edge of the ledge,
and then the spider from his...Read more of this...

Song To Be Sung by the Father of Infant Female Children

by Ogden Nash
 My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
Contrariwise, my blood runs cold
When little boys go by.
For little boys as little boys,
No special hate I carry,
But now and then they grow to men,
And when they do, they marry.
No matter how they tarry,
Eventually they marry.
And, swine among the pearls,
They marry little girls.

Oh, somewhere, somewhere, an infant plays,
With parents...Read more of this...

The Other

by Sylvia Plath
 You come in late, wiping your lips.
What did I leave untouched on the doorstep---

White Nike,
Streaming between my walls?

Smilingly, blue lightning
Assumes, like a meathook, the burden of his parts.

The police love you, you confess everything.
Bright hair, shoe-black, old plastic,

Is my life so intriguing?
Is it for this you widen your eye-rings?

Is it for this the air motes depart?
They rae not air...Read more of this...

Blackberry-Picking

by Seamus Heaney
 Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent...Read more of this...

Lady Lazarus

by Sylvia Plath
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it_____
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?-------
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on...Read more of this...

Underneath (9)

by Jorie Graham
  Spring
Up, up you go, you must be introduced.

You must learn belonging to (no-one)

Drenched in the white veil (day)

The circle of minutes pushed gleaming onto your finger.

Gaps pocking the brightness where you try to see
in.

Missing: corners, fields,

completeness: holes growing in it where the eye looks hardest.

Below, his chest, a sacred weightless place

and the small weight of your open hand...Read more of this...

Round-Pond

by Richard Aldington
 Water ruffled and speckled by galloping wind 
Which puffs and spurts it into tiny pashing breaks 
Dashed with lemon-yellow afternoon sunlight. 
The shining of the sun upon the water 
Is like a scattering of gold crocus-petals 
In a long wavering irregular flight. 

The water is cold to the eye 
As the wind to the cheek. 

In the budding chestnuts...Read more of this...

Pretty Words

by Elinor Wylie
 Poets make pets of pretty, docile words:
I love smooth words, like gold-enamelled fish
Which circle slowly with a silken swish,
And tender ones, like downy-feathred birds:
Words shy and dappled, deep-eyed deer in herds,
Come to my hand, and playful if I wish,
Or purring softly at a silver dish,
Blue Persian kittens fed on cream and curds. 

I love bright words, words up and...Read more of this...

Dinner in a Quick Lunch Room

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 Soup should be heralded with a mellow horn, 
Blowing clear notes of gold against the stars; 
Strange entrees with a jangle of glass bars 
Fantastically alive with subtle scorn; 
Fish, by a plopping, gurgling rush of waters, 
Clear, vibrant waters, beautifully austere; 
Roast, with a thunder of drums to stun the ear, 
A screaming fife, a voice from ancient...Read more of this...

The Wedding Ring Dance

by Anne Sexton
 I dance in circles holding
the moth of the marriage,
thin, sticky, fluttering
its skirts, its webs.
The moth oozing a tear,
or is it a drop of urine?
The moth, grinning like a pear,
or is it teeth
clamping the iron maiden shut?

The moth,
who is my mother,
who is my father,
who was my lover,
floats airily out of my hands
and I dance slower,
pulling off the fat diamond engagement...Read more of this...

doughnut denial

by Rg Gregory
 (an ascetic poem for karen's birthday)

fancy having a birthday on a thursday
when you do the buying of the doughnuts
and others lick their sticky fingers
thinking good old karen letting
us share the eating of her birthday

not me of course - i sit at home (alone)
reflecting it is purification day
today and i do not have a doughnut
thank you karen for letting me...Read more of this...

Rondeau at the Train Stop

by Erin Belieu
 It bothers me: the genital smell of the bay
drifting toward me on the T stop, the train
circling the city like a dingy, year-round
Christmas display. The Puritans were right! Sin
is everywhere in Massachusetts, hell-bound

in the population. it bothers me
because it's summer now and sticky - no rain
to cool things down; heat like a wound
that will not close. Too hot, these...Read more of this...

Exiled

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
Of the big surf that breaks all day.

Always before about my dooryard,
Marking the reach of the...Read more of this...

Drunk As Drunk

by Pablo Neruda
 Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months...Read more of this...

To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Triumph

by Anne Sexton
 Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wintgs on, 
testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade, 
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn 
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made! 
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels; 
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past 
and think of innocent Icarus who is...Read more of this...

The Sun Underfoot Among The Sundews

by Amy Clampitt
 An ingenuity too astonishing
to be quite fortuitous is
this bog full of sundews, sphagnum-
lined and shaped like a teacup.
 A step
down and you're into it; a
wilderness swallows you up:
ankle-, then knee-, then midriff-
to-shoulder-deep in wetfooted
understory, an overhead
spruce-tamarack horizon hinting
you'll never get out of here.
 But the sun
among the sundews, down there,
is so bright, an underfoot
webwork of carnivorous rubies,
a star-swarm thick...Read more of this...

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth

by Pam Ayres
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth,
And spotted the dangers beneath
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food.
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

I wish I’d been that much more willin’
When I had more tooth there than fillin’
To give up gobstoppers,
From respect to me choppers,
And to buy something else with me shillin’.

When I think of the lollies...Read more of this...

Spiders

by Delmore Schwartz
 Is the spider a monster in miniature?
His web is a cruel stair, to be sure,
Designed artfully, cunningly placed,
A delicate trap, carefully spun
To bind the fly (innocent or unaware)
In a net as strong as a chain or a gun.

There are far more spiders than the man in the street
 supposes
And the philosopher-king imagines, let alone knows!
There are six hundred kinds...Read more of this...

Wash

by Jane Kenyon
 All day the blanket snapped and swelled
on the line, roused by a hot spring wind....
 From there it witnessed the first sparrow,
early flies lifting their sticky feet,
and a green haze on the south-sloping hills.
Clouds rose over the mountain....At dusk
I took the blanket in, and we slept,
restless, under its fragrant weight....Read more of this...

Bitterness

by Philip Levine
 Here in February, the fine 
dark branches of the almond 
begin to sprout tiny clusters 
of leaves, sticky to the touch. 
Not far off, about the length 
of my morning shadow, the grass 
is littered with the petals 
of the plum that less than 
a week ago blazed, a living 
candle in the hand of earth. 
I was living...Read more of this...

English Flavors

by Laure-Anne Bosselaar
  I love to lick English the way I licked the hard 
round licorice sticks the Belgian nuns gave me for six
good conduct points on Sundays after mass. 

 Love it when ‘plethora’, ‘indolence’, ‘damask’, 
or my new word: ‘lasciviousness,’ stain my tongue, 
thicken my saliva, sweet as those sticks — black

 and slick with every lick it took...Read more of this...

Nothing But Death

by Pablo Neruda
 There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is...Read more of this...

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