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Famous Towel Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Murray, Les
...rs slump irritably together in
the muggy weeks. Shark and jellyfish shallows
become suburbs where you breathe a fat towel;
babies burst like tomatoes with discomfort
in the cotton-wrapped pointing street markets;
the Lycra-bulging surf drips from non-swimmers
miles from shore, and somehow includes soil.
Skins, touching, soak each other. Skin touching
any surface wets that and itself
in a kind of mutual digestion.
Throbbing heads grow lianas of nonsense. 

...Read more of this...



by McGonagall, William Topaz
...g, "I hope, sir, you've met with no great harm;
And for five men to attack you, it's a disgrace;
But stay, I'll fetch a towel and water to wash your face." 

And when the King washed the blood off his face and hands,
"Now, sir, I wish to know who you are," the King demands.
"My name, sir, is John Howieson, a bondsman on the farm of Braehead."
"Oh, well," replied the King, "your company I need not dread." 

"And perhaps you'll accompany me a little way towards ...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...oes and test their perfect
skin. He was my brother, my small
Johnny brother, almost ten. We flopped
down upon a towel to grind the sand
under us and watched the Atlantic sea
move fire, like night sparklers;
and lost our weight in the festival
season. He dreamed, he said, to be
a man designed like a balanced wave...
how someday he would wait, giant
and straight.
Johnny, your dream moves summers
inside my mind.
He was tall and twenty that July,
b...Read more of this...

by Amichai, Yehuda
...a roof in the Old City
Laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight:
The white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,
The towel of a man who is my enemy,
To wipe off the sweat of his brow.

In the sky of the Old City
A kite.
At the other end of the string,
A child
I can't see
Because of the wall.

We have put up many flags,
They have put up many flags.
To make us think that they're happy.
To make them think that we're happy....Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...rd, went out for cigarettes;
while she, jeered by the minor demons,
pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found
a towel to dust the table-top,
and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove.
By evening she was back in love again,
though not so wholly but throughout the night
she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming
like a relentless milkman up the stairs....Read more of this...



by Levine, Philip
...rror
having admired your new-found
 potency -- humming
"My Funny Valentine" or
 "Body and Soul" --
to reach for a rough towel
 or some garment
on which to dry yourself,
 he would enter
the open window behind you
 that gave gratefully
onto the fields and the roads
 bathed in dawn --
he, the magpie -- and snatch
 up the ring
in his hard beak and shoulder
 his way back
into the currents of the world
 on his way
to the only person who could
 change your life:
a king or a bride or...Read more of this...

by Lehman, David
...I could stare for hours
at her, the woman stepping
out of her bath, breasts
bare, towel around her waist,
before I knew she was you 
in that one-bedroom in 
the Village sunny and cold
that Friday we woke up 
slowly & our breakfast table
arranged itself into 
a still life with irises
in a vase and a peeled orange,
espresso cups and saucers
and The Necessary Angel by
Wallace Stevens, a little violet
paperback opened to page 58:
"the moralit...Read more of this...

by Murray, Les
..., at this age, but it's still there, ridicule,
the pistol that kills women, that gets them killed, crippling men
on the towel-spattered sand. Equality is dressed, neatly,
with mouth still shut. Bared body is not equal ever.
Some are smiled to each other. Many surf, swim, play ball:
like that red boy, holding his wet T shirt off his breasts....Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...ear somebody else

 will have to go trout fishing.

 Somebody else will have to go

 out there."










 THE TOWEL





We came down the road from Lake Josephus and down the

road from Seafoam. We stopped along the way to get a drink

of water. There was a small monument in the forest. I

walked over to the monument to see what was happening. The

glass door of the lookout was partly open and a towel was

hanging on the other side.

 At the cent...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...eals no cracks that can be decoded? when washbowl
maintains it has no more holy calling
than physical ablution, and the towel
dryly disclaims that fierce troll faces lurk
in its explicit folds? or when the window,
blind with steam, will not admit the dark
which shrouds our prospects in ambiguous shadow?

Twenty years ago, the familiar tub
bred an ample batch of omens; but now
water faucets spawn no danger; each crab
and octopus -- scrabbling just beyond the view,
waiting for ...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...of the castle prick forth on her jennet,
``And, with water to wash the hands of her liege
``In a clean ewer with a fair toweling,
`` Let her preside at the disemboweling.''
Now, my friend, if you had so little religion
As to catch a hawk, some falcon-lanner,
And thrust her broad wings like a banner
Into a coop for a vulgar pigeon;
And if day by day and week by week
You cut her claws, and sealed her eyes,
And clipped her wings, and tied her beak,
Would it cause you any gre...Read more of this...

by Taylor, Ann
...hair. 

I don't mind the trouble, if you would not cry,
But pay me for all with a kiss; 
That's right -- ­take the towel and wipe your wet eye,
I thought you'd be good after this....Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...a serviette.
I sought a shop wherein they sell
 Such articles as these,
And told a smiling mademoiselle;
 'I want a towel, please.'

'Of kinds,' said she, 'I've only two,'
 And took the bundles down;
And one was coloured azure blue,
 And one was khaki brown.
With doubt I scratched my hoary head;
 The quality was right;
The size too, yet I gravely said:
 'Too bad you haven't white.'

That pretty maid had sunny hair,
 Her gaze was free from guile,
And while I he...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...that will bury us)
and you were in my body
(that room that will outlive us)
and at first I rubbed your 
feet dry with a towel
becuase I was your slave
and then you called me princess.
Princess!

Oh then
I stood up in my gold skin
and I beat down the psalms
and I beat down the clothes
and you undid the bridle
and you undid the reins
and I undid the buttons,
the bones, the confusions,
the New England postcards,
the January ten o’clcik night,
and we rose up like wheat,
acre ...Read more of this...

by Xavier, Emanuel
...these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet”
-Matthew 24:6

1.
I escape the horrors of war 
with a towel and a room
Offering myself 
to Palestinian and Jewish boys
as a ‘piece’ to the Middle East
when I should be concerned with the untimely deaths
of dark-skinned babies
and the brutal murders 
of light-skinned fathers

2.
I’ve been more consumed with how to make
the cover of local *** rags
than how to open the minds 
of angry little boys
...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things