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Famous Unwashed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...h-century Nirvana-talk— 
To do with you and me?” The Captain raised 
His hand and held it westward, where a patched
And unwashed attic-window filtered in 
What barren light could reach us, and then said, 
With a suave, complacent resonance: “There shines 
The sun. Behold it. We go round and round, 
And wisdom comes to us with every whirl
We count throughout the circuit. We may say 
The child is born, the boy becomes a man, 
The man does this and that, and the man ...Read more of this...



by Lowell, Robert
...My whole eye was sunset red,
the old cut cornea throbbed,
I saw things darkly,
as through an unwashed goldfish globe.

I lay all day on my bed.
I chain-smoked through the night,
learning to flinch
at the flash of the matchlight.

Outside, the summer rain,
a simmer of rot and renewal,
fell in pinpricks.
Even new life is fuel.

My eyes throb.
Nothing can dislodge
the house with my first tooth
noosed in a knot to ...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...wheezings
from hell
itself.
your mind
almost breaks
under those
death-like
sounds
and the
intermingling
odors:
hard
unwashed socks
pissed and
shitted 
underwear
and over it all
slowly circulating
air
much like that
emanating from 
uncovered
garbage
cans.
and those
bodies
in the dark
fat and
thin
and
bent
some
legless
armless
some 
mindless
and worst of
all:
the total
absence of
hope
it shrouds
them
covers them
totally.
it's not
bearable.
you get
up
go out
walk...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...yways and drug fiends pale --
Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail: --
Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath,
Unwashed legions with the ways of Death --
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)

[Banjos.]

Every slum had sent its half-a-score
The round world over. (Booth had groaned for more.)
Every banner that the wide world flies
Bloomed with glory and transcendent dyes.
Big-voiced lasses made their banjos bang,
Tranced, fanatical they shrieked a...Read more of this...

by Soto, Gary
...oing to win at night. The teachers were
Too close to dying to understand. The hallways
Stank of poor grades and unwashed hair. Thus,
A friend and I sat watching the water on Saturday,
Neither of us talking much, just warming ourselves
By hurling large rocks at the dusty ground
And feeling awful because San Francisco was a postcard
On a bedroom wall. We wanted to go there, 
Hitchhike under the last migrating birds
And be with people who knew more than three cho...Read more of this...



by Bukowski, Charles
...ads,
and the boys get out the maps
and pin-cuishon the moon,
old green cheese,
no life there but too much on earth:
our unwashed India boys
crosssing their legs,playing pipes,
starving with sucked in bellies,
watching the snakes volute
like beautiful women in the hungry air;
the rockets leap,
the rockets leap like hares,
clearing clump and dog
replacing out-dated bullets;
the Chineses still carve
in jade,quietly stuffing rice
into their hunger, a hunger
a thousand years old,
...Read more of this...

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