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Famous Windshield Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Collins, Billy
...be someone I passed on the street 
or the face behind the wheel of an oncoming car.

The sunlight flashes off your windshield,
and when I look up into the small, posted mirror,
I watch you diminish—my echo, my twin—
and vanish around a curve in this whip 
of a road we can't help traveling together....Read more of this...



by Bosselaar, Laure-Anne
...p, 
scared to death by my longing for it,
death, so early in the morning, driving 
until the longing runs on empty?
The windshield wipers can’t 

 keep up with this deluge,
and I almost run over it, a flapping
white thing in the middle of the street.
I step out, it’s a gull, one leg
caught in a red plastic net

 snared around its neck.
I throw my shirt over the shrieking thing,
take it back to the car, search my bag
for something, anything, find a nail file, 
start sa...Read more of this...

by Jong, Erica
...g else.

He trapped clouds in bottles
the way kids
trap grasshoppers.
Then one misty day

he was stopped
by the windshield.
Behind him,
an avenue of trees,

before him,
the mirror of that scene.
He seemed to enter
what, in fact, he left....Read more of this...

by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)
...ing about, 
churning itself white, drawing 
green in over it,—plunging glassy funnels 
fall— 
And—the other world— 
the windshield a blunt barrier: 
Talk to me. Sh! they would hear us. 
—the backs of their heads facing us— 
The stream continues its motion of 
a hound running over rough ground. 

Trees vanish—reappear—vanish: 
detached dance of gnomes—as a talk 
dodging remarks, glows and fades. 
—The unseen power of words— 
And now that a few of the moves 
are...Read more of this...

by Clampitt, Amy
...asagna-
layered flatbed 
truckload: hardtop 

reverting to tar smudge,
wax shine antiqued to crusted 
winepress smear, 
windshield battered to
intact ice-tint, a rarity

fresh from the Pleistocene. 
I like it; privately 
I find esthetic 
satisfaction in these 
ceremonial removals

from the category of
received ideas
to regions where pigeons' 
svelte smoke-velvet
limousines, taxiing 

in whirligigs, reclaim 
a parking lot,
and the bag-laden
hermit woman, disencumbered 
of ...Read more of this...



by Roethke, Theodore
...alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,
The road lined with snow-laden second growth,
A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,
Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,
And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,
The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,
Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut,
Where the car stalls,
Churning in a snowdrift
Until the headlights darken. 

II

At the field's end, in the corner missed by the mower,
Where the t...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...rd churches,
bleached, ridged as clamshells,
past twin silver birches,

through late afternoon
a bus journeys west,
the windshield flashing pink,
pink glancing off of metal,
brushing the dented flank
of blue, beat-up enamel;

down hollows, up rises,
and waits, patient, while
a lone traveller gives
kisses and embraces
to seven relatives
and a collie supervises.

Goodbye to the elms,
to the farm, to the dog.
The bus starts. The light
grows richer; the fog,
shifting,...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things