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Famous Suitcase Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Service, Robert William
..."Carry your suitcase, Sir?" he said.
I turned away to hide a grin,
For he was shorter by a head
Than I and pitiably thin.
I could have made a pair of him,
So with my load I stoutly legged;
But his tenacity was grim:
"Please let me help you, sir," he begged.

I could not shake the fellow off,
So let him shoulder my valise;
He tottered with a racking cough
Tha...Read more of this...



by Berman, David
...She woke me up at dawn,
her suitcase like a little brown dog at her heels.

I sat up and looked out the window
at the snow falling in the stand of blackjack trees.

A bus ticket in her hand.

Then she brought something black up to her mouth,
a plum I thought, but it was an asthma inhaler.

I reached under the bed for my menthols
and she asked if I ever thought of cancer...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...
The neighbors got a radio with an aerial; 
 we got a little portable. 
They got a lot of closet space; 
 we got a suitcase. 

I say, "Le Roy, just how much are we owing?
Something I can't comprehend,
the more we got the more we spend...."
He only answers, "Let's get going."
Le Roy, you're earning too much money now.

I sit and look at our backyard
 and find it very hard.
What have we got for all his dollars and cents?
 --A pile of bottles...Read more of this...

by Webb, Charles
...c doorknocker—
is fringed with wrinkled tags from United, Delta,

U.S. Air (which crunched the hole, flying
the suitcase back from Houston). I'd gone there
to see Mom in the "home," and save some boyhood

relics before my sister gave them to Good Will.
"Take mine," Mom said, hearing my suitcase was full.
"I won't need luggage, the next place I go."...Read more of this...

by Olds, Sharon
...I pull the bed slowly open, I
open the lips of the bed, get
the stack of fresh underpants
out of the suitcase—peach, white,
cherry, quince, pussy willow, I
choose a color and put them on,
I travel with the stack for the stack's caress,
dry and soft. I enter the soft
birth-lips of the bed, take off my
glasses, and the cabbage-roses on the curtain
blur to Keats's peonies, the
ochre willow holds a cloud
the way a skeleton holds flesh
and it passes, does no...Read more of this...



by Levine, Philip
...only to rediscover the same nightmare 
they left at home. A nine-year-old girl travels 
all night by train with one suitcase and an orange. 
She learns that mercy is something you can eat 
again and again while the juice spills over 
your chin, you can wipe it away with the back 
of your hands and you can never get enough....Read more of this...

by Duhamel, Denise
...my mother pushed my sister out of the apartment door with an empty 
suitcase because she kept threatening to run away my sister was sick of me
getting the best of everything the bathrobe with the pink stripes instead of 
the red the soft middle piece of bread while she got the crust I was sick with 
asthma and she thought this made me a favorite

I wanted to be like the girl in the made-for-tv movie Maybe I'll Come Home
in t...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...en cared for
 tenderly.
Now they face a winter of white sheets, white faces.
There is very little to go into my suitcase.

There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush. There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound that they are letting go.
I leave my health behind. I leave someone
Who would adhere to me: I undo her fingers like bandages: I go.Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...I have to find 
the cats. I have four cats 
even when I am asleep. 
One is on the bed and I slip 

her into the suitcase. 
One is under the sofa. I 
drag him out. But the tabby 
in the suitcase has vanished. 

Now my tickets have run away. 
Maybe the cat has my tickets. 
I can only find one cat. 
My purse has gone into hiding. 

Now it is time to get packed. 
I take the suitcase down. 
There is a cat in it but no clothes. 
M...Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...ement and mortar;
The little dog is his own true love;
But the big dog is to her
Like a scarlet rag to a Longhorn,
Or a suitcase to a porter;
The day he sat on the hornet
I distinctly heard her purr.

Well, how can you blame the little dog,
Who was once the household darling?
He romps like a young Adonis,
She droops like an old mustache;
No wonder she steals his corner,
No wonder she comes out snarling,
No wonder she calls him Cochon
And even Espèce de vache.

Yet onc...Read more of this...

by Simic, Charles
...lat and desolate
To the far-off gray horizon, wherein obscurely,
A man and a woman went on foot,

Each carrying a small suitcase.
They were tired and had taken off
Their shoes and were walking on
Their toes, staring straight ahead.

Every time a car passed fast,
As they're wont to on such a stretch of
Road, empty as the crow flies,
How quickly they were gone--

The cars, I mean, and then the drizzle
That brought on the early evening,
Little by little, and hardly a lig...Read more of this...

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