Love Poems

The 100 Best Love Poems of All Time

Here, in one compact volume, is a greatest hits collection of the 100 bets love poems ever written by 100 of the world's greatest poets.This essential anthology is ideal for the romantic-and will inspire any cynic.The poets included range throughout the history of world literature: from the Classics (Sappho, Catullus) and Renaissance (Shakespeare, Donne, Dante) to the Romantics (Shelly, Keats, Wordsworth) and 20th century giants (Frost, Lorca, Graves), right down to the present day (Viorst, Patchen, Neruda).Each poem features a brief introduction, which details the poet's life history as well as the poem's significance.

Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing

Now in paperback, this is the definitive collection of America's bestselling poet Rumi's finest poems of love and lovers. In Coleman Barks' delightful and wise renderings, these poems will open your heart and soul to the lover inside and out.

'There are lovers content with longing.

I'm not one of them.'

Rumi is best known for his poems expressing the ecstasies and mysteries of love of all kinds – erotic, divine, friendship –and Coleman Barks collects here the best of those poems, ranging from the 'wholeness' one experiences with a true lover, to the grief of a lover's loss, and all the states in between: from the madness of sudden love to the shifting of a romance to deep friendship – these poems cover all 'the magnificent regions of the heart'.

100 Love Sonnets: Cien sonetos de amor (Texas Pan American Series)

If you've ever wished for a fresh and imaginative way of saying "I love you" to your beloved, peruse Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets. This intimate bilingual collection overflows with the master poet's signature sensuality and inventive imagery. Written in the 1950s for his cherished wife Matilde Urrutia, Neruda's earnest adoration leaps off the page in poem after poem: "Your heart is a clay toy shaped like a dove"; "Your kisses are clusters of fruit, fresh with dew." Thanks to translator Stephen Tapscott, Neruda's dreamy images carry over vividly from the Spanish and dance in the mind for days after they're read.

Neruda pays only loose tribute to the sonnet by employing a 14-line structure for each poem. As he says, his sonnets are made of wood, rather than the "silver, or crystal, or cannonfire" of a more refined sonnet. Neruda's humility is apparent as he refers again and again to the natural landscape of Isla Negra (the Pacific island where he and his wife lived) to describe his simple dedication to Matilde: "...I am like a scorched rock / that suddenly sings when you are near, because it drinks / the water you carry from the forest, in your voice."

Journeying from the erotic celebration of the body to the spiritual depths of eternal union, 100 Love Sonnets shows why "two happy lovers make one bread" and "waking, they leave one sun empty in their bed."

Against the backdrop of Isla Negra — the sea and wind, the white sand with its scattering of delicate wild flowers, the hot sun and salty smells of the Pacific — Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda sets these joyfully sensual poems in celebration of his love. The subject of that love: Matilde Urrutia de Neruda, the poet's "beloved wife."

As popular in the Hispanic world as the poet's renowned Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, One Hundred Love Sonnets has never before been published in its entirety in English translation. The reason for this astonishing neglect may lie in the historical circumstances that surrounded Neruda's "discovery " by English-speaking readers. In the United States he came to popularity during the turmoil of the sixties, when Americans needed a politically committed poet, and much of Neruda's canon answered that need. But, in his native Chile and throughout Latin America, Neruda has always been cherished as dearly for the earthly sensuality and eroticism of his love poetry as for his statements of political belief. To know this work, then is to understand the poet's art more thoroughly.

Love Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)

It has often been said that love, both sacred and profane, is the only true subject of the lyric poem. Nothing better justifies this claim than the splendid poems in this volume, which range from the writings of ancient China to those of modern-day America and represent, at its most piercing, a universal experience of the human soul.

Includes poems by John Donne, Christina Rossetti, W. H. Auden, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Graves, e. e. cummings, Dorothy Parker, William Shakespeare, Sappho, Bhartrhari, Anna Akhmatova, and W. B. Yeats, among many others.

Love Letters (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)

Here are 200 irresistible love letters from over the centuries, love letters both historic and fictional, love letters by poets and by princes, love letters enchanting, tragic, comic, superbly selected, beautifully printed, conveniently portable, to have with you wherever and whenever you're in the mood for love.

Hour to Live, An Hour to Love, An

Richard Carlson's Don't Sweat the Small Stuff series has been an incredible hit, with over 9 million copies of the original book in print and over 16 million copies of the entire series. Now Kristine Carlson has created an incredibly moving book in memory of her beloved husband, including Richard's love letter to Kristine on their 18th wedding anniversary. Kristine responds to this letter in the second half of the book. The book also invites readers to create their own answers to the central question.

Love in Verse: Classic Poems of the Heart

The world for me, and all the world
can hold, is circled by your arms. . . .
--James Weldon Johnson                                                         [p. 48]

True love is eternal--and in poetry, it speaks across the ages to both men and women, reminding us of its power, constancy, and depth. In this lovely literary valentine, nearly a hundred evocative, tender poems from some of the most inspired poets of our time celebrate love longed for and finally found; love requited and unrequited; love secret and blazoned across the sky; loves past, present, and yet to come.

An incomparable collection of beauty and grace, Love in Verse pays fitting tribute to the world's most treasured emotion.

Eros the Bittersweet

A book about love as seen by the ancients, Eros is Anne Carson's exploration of the concept of "eros" in both classical philosophy and literature. Beginning with: "It was Sappho who first called eros 'bittersweet.' No one who has been in love disputes her. What does the word mean?", Carson examines her subject from numerous points of view and styles, transcending the constraints of the scholarly exercise for an evocative and lyrical meditation in the tradition of William Carlos William's Spring and All and William H. Gass's On Being Blue.

Epigrammatic, witty, ironic, and endlessly interesting, Eros is an utterly original book by an author whose acclaim has been steadily growing since the book was first published in 1986 by Johns Hopkins.

Gibran's Little Book of Love

Kahlil Gibran was a masterful writer whose work has inspired generations to find new and enriching perspectives on life, love and companionship. Best-selling author of The Prophet, which sold more copies in the twentieth century than any other book except the Bible, Gibran's enduring words have challenged generations of men and women to see love in a new light. There should be spaces in togetherness, he says, so that we do not cast shadows and inhibit each other's growth; 'love one another,' he says, 'but make not a bond of love.' In this compendium, Gibran's universal vision of hope and unity is made manifest in human relationships. Poetic and practical, his words on love are profoundly personal and emotionally evocative. They will alter your perception of yourself, your loved ones, and the world you inhabit, transforming the mundane into the miraculous.

Dance Me to the End of Love (Art & Poetry)

The Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen, known primarily for his mournful tunes of love misplaced, has produced a surprising message of hopeful passion in this playful picture book for grownups in love. The 21 Matisse illustrations sprawl luxuriously across the pages. Art, poetry, and the suggestion of erotic delights... what more can a lover ask?

10 years ago, Welcome Books published the star of its Art & Poetry Series, Dance Me to the End of Love, a deliriously romantic song by Leonard Cohen that was brilliantly visualized through the sensual paintings of Henri Matisse. Now for its 10-year anniversary, Welcome is thrilled to present the entirely re-imagined and redesigned Dance Me to the End of Love. With the art of Matisse and the words of Cohen still at the heart of the book, the new look and feel of this Art & Poetry book is overwhelmingly beautiful.
Cohen's song is a lyrical tribute to the miracle of love, the grace it bestows on us and its healing, restorative power. Originally recorded on his Various Positions album, and featured in Cohen's anthology, Stranger Music, this poetic song is gloriously married to the art works by Henri Matisse, perhaps the greatest artist of the twentieth century. "I had this dance within me for a long time," Matisse once said in describing one of his murals. Dance Me to the End of Love is the perfect book for art lovers, song lovers, and all other lovers as well.