Famous Vaudeville Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Vaudeville poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous vaudeville poems. These examples illustrate what a famous vaudeville poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...Judith the dancer, Judith the dancer,
With foot like the snow, and with step like the rain.
Oh, thrice-painted dancer, vaudeville dancer,
Sad in your spangles, with soul all astrain,
I know a dancer, I know a dancer,
Whose laughter and weeping are spiritual gain,
A pure-hearted, high-hearted maiden evangel,
With strength the dark cynical earth to disdain.
Flowers of bright Broadway, you of the chorus,
Who sing in the hope of forgetting your pain:
I turn to a sister of Sain...Read more of this...
by
Lindsay, Vachel
...The last pose flickered, failed. The screen's dead white
Glared in a sudden flooding of harsh light
Stabbing the eyes; and as I stumbled out
The curtain rose. A fat girl with a pout
And legs like hams, began to sing "His Mother".
Gusts of bad air rose in a choking smother;
Smoke, the wet steam of clothes, the stench of plush,
Powder, cheap perfume, ...Read more of this...
by
Benet, Stephen Vincent
...d plates
the flowers remain composed.
Coolly their colloquy continues
above the coffee and loud talk
grown frail as vaudeville....Read more of this...
by
Williams, William Carlos (WCW)
...Moko, the Educated Ape is here,
The pet of vaudeville, so the posters say,
And every night the gaping people pay
To see him in his panoply appear;
To see him pad his paunch with dainty cheer,
Puff his perfecto, swill champagne, and sway
Just like a gentleman, yet all in play,
Then bow himself off stage with brutish leer.
And as to-night, with noble knowledge crammed,
I 'mid this human compost ta...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...unniest of men.
He always worked a triple-hinged surprise
To end the scene and make one rub his eyes.
He comes with vaudeville, with stare and leer.
He comes with megaphone and specious cheer.
His troupe, too fat or short or long or lean,
Step from the pages of the magazine
With slapstick or sombrero or with cane:
The rube, the cowboy or the masher vain.
They over-act each part. But at the height
Of banter and of canter and delight
The masks fall off for one quee...Read more of this...
by
Lindsay, Vachel
...ELSIE FLIMMERWON, you got a job now with a jazz outfit in vaudeville.
The houses go wild when you finish the act shimmying a fast shimmy to The Livery Stable Blues.
It is long ago, Elsie Flimmerwon, I saw your mother over a washtub in a grape arbor when your father came with the locomotor ataxia shuffle.
It is long ago, Elsie, and now they spell your name with an electric sign.
Then you were a little thing in c...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
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