Famous Unshaven Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Purgatory

by Maxine Kumin
 And suppose the darlings get to Mantua, 
suppose they cheat the crypt, what next? Begin 
with him, unshaven. Though not, I grant you, a 
displeasing cockerel, there's egg yolk on his chin. 
His seedy robe's aflap, he's got the rheum. 
Poor dear, the cooking lard has smoked her eye. 
Another Montague is in the womb 
although the first babe's...Read more of this...

Desesperanto

by Marilyn Hacker
 After Joseph Roth

Parce que c'était lui; parce que c'était moi.
Montaigne, De L'amitië

The dream's forfeit was a night in jail
and now the slant light is crepuscular.
Papers or not, you are a foreigner
whose name is always difficult to spell.
You pack your one valise. You ring the bell.
Might it not be prudent to disappear
beneath that mauve-blue sky above the square
fronting your cosmopolitan...Read more of this...

You Can Have It

by Philip Levine
 My brother comes home from work 
and climbs the stairs to our room. 
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop 
one by one. You can have it, he says. 

The moonlight streams in the window 
and his unshaven face is whitened 
like the face of the moon. He will sleep 
long after noon and waken to...Read more of this...

The Beach

by Weldon Kees
 Squat, unshaven, full of gas,
Joseph Samuels, former clerk
in four large cities, out of work,
waits in the darkened underpass.

In sanctuary, out of reach,
he stares at the fading light outside:
the rain beginning: hears the tide
that drums along the empty beach.

When drops first fell at six o'clock,
the bathers left. The last car's gone.
Sun's final rays reflect upon
the streaking rain, the rambling dock.

He...Read more of this...

Salts And Oils

by Philip Levine
 In Havana in 1948 I ate fried dog
believing it was Peking duck. Later,
in Tampa I bunked with an insane sailor
who kept a .38 Smith and Wesson in his shorts.
In the same room were twins, oilers
from Toledo, who argued for hours
each night whose turn it was
to get breakfast and should he turn
the eggs or not. On the way north
I lived...Read more of this...

The Fire Sermon

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
  The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
  Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
  Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
  Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
  The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
  Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
  Or...Read more of this...

Our Son

by Barry Tebb
 Quarter to three: I wake again at the hour of his birth

Thirty years ago and now he paces corridors of dark

In nightmares of self-condemnation where random thoughts

Besiege his fevered imagination – England’s 

Imminent destruction, his own, the world’s…

Sixty to eighty cigarettes a day, unavailing depot injections,

Failed abscondings, failed everything: Eton and Balliol

Hold no sway on ward one, nor even...Read more of this...

Forest Of Europe

by Derek Walcott
 The last leaves fell like notes from a piano
and left their ovals echoing in the ear;
with gawky music stands, the winter forest
looks like an empty orchestra, its lines
ruled on these scattered manuscripts of snow.

The inlaid copper laurel of an oak
shines though the brown-bricked glass above your head
as bright as whisky, while the wintry breath
of lines from Mandelstam, which you...Read more of this...

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