The 100 Best Love Poems of All Time

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The compilers of The 100 Best Love Poems of All Time accepted the task of selecting the best poems relating to love, seeking to create a volume that would have a wide breadth of coverage. Of authors, of styles, of periods, of influences. They sought to touch each of the imagined petals on the flower of love. Agony and ecstasy. Longing and resignation. Delirium and devotion. Sensuality, seduction and surrender.

The editor and those who helped assemble this collection recognized that each reader will have a different and distinct reaction to each poem. Just as each of us has a different reaction to our own personal encounters with love. Knowing that no other man or woman has ever loved as wholly as we do. As completely as we did!


This small volume of poems has met that goal of 'something for everyone'. Somewhere in this collection you will find a poem, a line, a phrase, a thought, that will make you say "that's how it was for me!". Somewhere among these one hundred poems your heart will skip a beat, your stomach will churn—for just a second!—as you remember a love found, a love remembered, a love held, a love lost.


Shakespeare, the only writer featured twice, appears early in the volume with his famous:

        Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
        Thou are more lovely and more temperate:
        Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
        And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
        . . .

...followed immediately by the playful and exuberant recasting of this classic by Howard Moss:

        Who says you're like one of the dog days?
        You're nicer. And better.
        Even in May, the weather can be gray,
        And a summer sub-let doesn't last forever.
        . . .



This is not a dusty, dry, 'force-yourself-to-turn-the-page' collection. Many of the poems (like the second one above) were new to me. The range of authors and periods is so broad that I am sure you will find old favorites and new delights. Each poem is lead by a short sentence or three by the editor. Perhaps setting the author in time or place. Or sharing her thoughts on the poem, perhaps a bit of historical context for the poem. But mostly, the poems speak for themselves.


From the anonymous sixteenth century Korean groom who watches his 16 year-old bride:

      It is the third watch. The girl
        in the bridal bedroom is so gentle,
        so beautiful, I look and look again;
        I can't believe my eyes.

...to the surrealistic offering of Richard Brautigan:

        . . .
        I'd love you and be your catfish
        friend and drive such lonely
        thoughts from your mind
        and suddenly you would be
            at peace,
        . . .



Hmmm. As I re-read the above just now, I realize that these brief quoted excerpts convey little of the power or emotions of the works contained in this book. Like bits of broken conversation—overheard, eavesdropped, misunderstood—these excerpts, perhaps, simply confuse my reader.


The solution?

Find this book. Read the complete, emotive works of Yeats, Goethe, Whitman, Frost, Dickinson, King Solomon, Millay, Hardy, D.H. Lawrence, Bukowski, Browning (Elizabeth and Robert) and many, many more. You will find moments, thoughts, feelings, emotions that you thought belonged to you alone. Yours and your lover's alone.

That is when you will realize that love really is the universal emotion. That your pain, your joy, your satiation, while seeming uniquely personal, is, in fact, shared throughout this condition we call humanity.


The Bottom Line
Expertly selected, meticulously indexed by title and author, featuring a separate Index to First Lines and an Acknowledgments section with many additional sources; The 100 Best Love Poems of All Time is a book any 'love-sick' or 'love-starved' reader will treasure.


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"Just the facts, ma'am"

Title: The 100 Best Love Poems of All Time
Author: Various, edited by Leslie Pockell
Publisher: Warner Books, Inc.
Copyright: 2003 by publisher
Pages: 128
ISBN #: 0-446-69022-8
Ages recommended: love-struck Teen to Adult