Famous Zinnias Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Father

by Edgar Albert Guest
 The long lines of diesels 
groan toward evening 
carrying off the breath 
of the living. 
The face of your house 
is black, 
it is your face, black 
and fire bombed 
in the first street wars, 
a black tooth planted in the earth 
of Michigan 
and bearing nothing, 
and the earth is black, 
sick on used oils. 

Did you look...Read more of this...

The Whipping

by Robert Hayden
 The old woman across the way
 is whipping the boy again
and shouting to the neighborhood
 her goodness and his wrongs.

Wildly he crashes through elephant ears,
 pleads in dusty zinnias,
while she in spite of crippling fat
 pursues and corners him.

She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling
 boy till the stick breaks
in her hand. His tears are rainy weather
 to woundlike...Read more of this...

Winter Promises

by Marge Piercy
 Tomatoes rosy as perfect baby's buttocks, 
eggplants glossy as waxed fenders, 
purple neon flawless glistening 
peppers, pole beans fecund and fast 
growing as Jack's Viagra-sped stalk, 
big as truck tire zinnias that mildew 
will never wilt, roses weighing down 
a bush never touched by black spot, 
brave little fruit trees shouldering up 
their spotless ornaments of glass fruit: 

I...Read more of this...

Elegy: Walking the Line

by Edgar Bowers
 Every month or so, Sundays, we walked the line,
The limit and the boundary. Past the sweet gum
Superb above the cabin, along the wall—
Stones gathered from the level field nearby
When first we cleared it. (Angry bumblebees
Stung the two mules. They kicked. Thirteen, I ran.)
And then the field: thread-leaf maple, deciduous
Magnolia, hybrid broom, and, further down,
In light shade, one Franklinia Alatamaha
In...Read more of this...

A Garden In Chicago

by Karl Shapiro
 In the mid-city, under an oiled sky,
I lay in a garden of such dusky green
It seemed the dregs of the imagination.
Hedged round by elegant spears of iron fence
My face became a moon to absent suns.
A low heat beat upon my reading face;
There rose no roses in that gritty place
But blue-gray lilacs hung their tassels out.
Hard zinnias and ugly marigolds
And...Read more of this...

Clouds

by Philip Levine
 1 

Dawn. First light tearing 
at the rough tongues of the zinnias, 
at the leaves of the just born. 

Today it will rain. On the road 
black cars are abandoned, but the clouds 
ride above, their wisdom intact. 

They are predictions. They never matter. 
The jet fighters lift above the flat roofs, 
black arrowheads trailing their future. 

2 

When...Read more of this...

The Gift

by David Lehman
 "He gave her class. She gave him sex." 
 -- Katharine Hepburn on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers 

He gave her money. She gave him head. 
He gave her tips on "aggressive growth" mutual funds. She gave him a red rose 
 and a little statue of eros. 
He gave her Genesis 2 (21-23). She gave him Genesis 1...Read more of this...

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