Why love poetry? 1. Silly love songs Litany / Billy Collins For an amorous lady / Theodore Roethke She's all my fancy painted him / Lewis Carroll The Lingam and the Yoni / A.D. Hope To an usherette / John Updike Love under the Republicans (or Democrats) / Ogden Nash Love : two vignettes / Robert Penn Warren Resignation / Nikki Giovanni "O mistress mine" (from Twelfth night) / William Shakespeare Nothing but No and I / Michael Drayton 2. Hello, I love you The good morrow / John Donne "Wild nights, wild nights!" / Emily Dickinson Meeting and passing / Robert Frost The greeting / R.H.W. Dillard The light / Common "The twenty-ninth bather" (from Song of myself) / Walt Whitman Thine eyes still shined / Ralph Waldo Emerson Surprised by joy / William Wordsworth Love's philosophy / Percy Bysshe Shelley Poem / Seamus Heaney 3. The comedy of Eros Pucker / Ritah Parrish Love portions / Julia Alvarez Lonely hearts / Wendy Cope "I, being born a woman" / Edna St. Vincent Millay Love song : I and thou / Alan Dugan Love song / Dorothy Parker The nymph's reply to the shepherd / Sir Walter Raleigh Portrait of a lady / William Carlos Williams Where be ye going, you Devon maid? / John Keats Brown penny / W.B. Yeats

4. Eye of the beholder How do I love thee? / Elizabeth Barrett Browning Juke box love song / Langston Hughes To my dear and loving husband / Anne Bradstreet From Homage to Mistress Bradstreet / John Berryman Song : to Celia / Ben Jonson A red, red rose / Robert Burns Ask me no more / Thomas Carew A girl in a library / Randall Jarrell "Not marble nor the gilded monuments" / William Shakespeare "Not marble nor the gilded monuments" / Archibald MacLeish 5. Loves me A birthday / Christina Georgina Rossetti Thou art my lute / Paul Laurence Dunbar Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond / E.E. Cummings Love poem / Connie Voisine The song of songs (7:1-8:3) / The New English Bible "If I profane with my unworthiest hand" (from Romeo and Juliet) / William Shakespeare Now sleeps the crimson petal / Alfred, Lord Tennyson When we two parted / George Gordon, Lord Byron "Joy of my life, full oft for loving you" / Edmund Spenser The changed man / Robert Phillips

6. Loves me not Then came flowers / Rita Dove The defiance / Aphra Behn A valediction : forbidding mourning / John Donne When you are old / W.B. Yeats I will not give thee all my heart / Grace Hazard Conkling Neutral tones / Thomas Hardy "I hear an army charging upon the land" / James Joyce Silentium amoris / Oscar Wilde Variations on the word love / Margaret Atwood Taking off my clothes / Carolyn Forché 7. Pleasures of the flesh Wrestling / Louisa S. Bevington Wet / Marge Piercy Down, Wanton, down! / Robert Graves Poem for Sigmund / Lorna Crozier Lullaby / W.H. Auden Green / Paul Verlaine Coral / Derek Walcott Her lips are copper wire / Jean Toomer "Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy" / John Donne The aged lover discourses in the flat style / J.V. Cunningham 8. Will you miss me when I'm gone? The river-merchant's wife : a letter / Ezra Pound Letter home / Stephen Dunn The voice / Thomas Hardy I will not let thee go / Robert Bridges The meeting / Katherine Mansfield Still looking out for number one / Raymond Carver Bearded oaks / Robert Penn Warren 48 hours after you left / DJ Renegade "That time of year thou mayst in me behold" / William Shakespeare Good night / W.S. Merwin

9. Failure to communicate

Never pain to tell thy love / William Blake

You say I love not / Robert Herrick

The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock / T.S. Eliot

Adam's curse / W.B. Yeats

Fire and ice / Robert Frost

"After great pain, a formal feeling comes" / Emily Dickinson

"Since the majority of me" / Philip Larkin

The rival / Sylvia Plath

The lost mistress / Robert Browning

Sleeping with you / John Updike

10. Second time around

"Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part" / Michael Drayton

"Sign no more, ladies" (from Much ado about nothing) / William Shakespeare

Sources of the Delaware / Dean Young

December at Yase / Gary Snyder

Freedom / Jan Struther

Good morning, love! / Paul Blackburn

I so like spring / Charlotte Mew

I look into my glass / Thomas Hardy

An answer to a love letter in verse / Lady Mary Wortley Montague

Symptom recital / Dorothy Parker

Index of titles

Index of first lines

Index of authors.