Customer Reviews

The 100 Best Love Poems of All Time

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn't touch your soul?
How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote lost objects,
in some dark and silent place that doesn't resonate
when our depths resound. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

Leslie Pockell has created a collection of 100 Love Poems in order to explore the many facets of love's expression. The poems range from passionate longings to realistic portrayals (Judith Viorst's True Love). There are images of love's transcendence and safety. Everything from ecstasy to grief is included. Classics like To Helen by Edgar Allan Poe are very familiar.

The River Merchant's Wife by Li Po brings elegant beauty and Strawberries by Edwin Morgan dips into memories of storms while eating strawberries in sugar, one of my all-time favorite poems because of the ending. Katherine Mansfield's poem about tea is warm and satisfying. The flow and rhythm in many of the poems is especially comforting.

The wide range of emotions within the poems also allows for a few moments of sarcasm (Love 20 Cents the First Quarter Mile by Kenneth Fearing) and even humor that is adorably funny. Your Catfish Friend by Richard Brautigan is witty and cute and looks at love from an especially creative perspective. This allows for poems with personality and lightens the heavier content and melancholy love often reveals.

Complete poems and extracts mingle effortlessly through the pages. Each poem is accompanied by an insightful explanation that also sheds light on historical facts and the life of the poet. In Love Song by Rainer Maria Rilke we learn of his lifelong melancholy and Leslie Pockell explains how he is conscious of the distance between lovers playing an "essential part in sustaining the mystery of love and life." Her ideas flow with the poems in a beautiful celebration of poetry. She gives only enough information to introduce the poem and does not provide extended commentary.

Poets featured in this collection include: Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Howard Moss, Christopher Marlowe, John Milton, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Burns, Robert Graves, Rumi, Sir John Suckling, E.E. Cummings, Frances Cornford, Sir Philip Sidney, Guillaume Apollinaire, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Walt Witman, Pablo Neruda, William Blake, Robert Frost, Catullus, Octavio Paz, Tzumi Shikibu, Sylvia Plath, Li Po, D.H. Lawrence, John Keats, Ted Hughes, Margaret Atwood and many more...

There are 100 poets featured in this book. Whether you are a hopeless romantic or enjoy thinking about the many aspects of love, this book has much to offer. I can almost guarantee you will find 5 poems to adore, 10 you want to read again and again and 20 new poets you are happy to have found.

~The Rebecca Review

The title says it all. Great Poets with great love poems equates to a pleasurable read. If you like romance and love, then this book Love poems are for you.

I like the variety of Love Poems in this book, from serious to ribald, from classic to modern. Also includes notes from the "author" which may offer some interpretive assitance.

i just feel that a collection like this tries to cover all the bases without truly understanding poetry. they've taken works out of context, from some eras of history, focusing on the period surrounding the 20th century, and suggest that every poetic work on love throughout time is contained within the pages of this book. i felt the editors were saying, "this is what and all that love is and can be."

some of the works selected are not the best by the author, which makes me feel that name recognition was more important than the actual piece. what is love? one should have asked. what is passion? can it be derived from words? can it leap off the page and beguile one with prose or verse? a siren, captivating one's gaze, so that eyes will never wander and only see the forthcoming words of fervor. does the piece make you feel what the author felt? does your body begin to exude the same such passion? can you taste the lips of the lover immortalized? does your world melt away and then become their world?

yes, some of these works have done this and some have just neatly arranged words and phrases. i wish this were more real and less like cliff notes. i understand that '100 love poems' is a buzz phrase and have probably promoted sales, but it should be more complete, with several from each author, delving into the heart of love and what it means to love. sometimes one cannot get there from here in a page or two. jump in with both feet and show me love.

love is an amazing thing. one can set out their whole life to find love and may only catch a glimpse of what it can be. love can alter one's persona, it can be all-consuming and it can even change the course of history. if only everyone could truly experience what it means to love, whole-heartedly. thinking and being comfortable are not attributes of love. love is, in all it's mystery, indescribable; so show me the way. lead me down the path so that i may see it, feel it and experience it first hand, even if i have never known it or called it friend. i want to live it vicariously through these letters and spaces. can a book do this citing randomly placed works over centuries of inspiration? in 100 pieces, it cannot. i've been left with an incurable taste in my mouth. only imbibing love's verses completely shall it be assuaged.


this book is nothing more than an introduction and should be treated as such, not a definitive collection. my suggestion to you is to read a more complete collection to truly know and feel what all these authors were actually meaning by LOVE.

Purchased as Valentine's Day gifts for my party. The first to arrive recipients became enthralled at the first reading.

This is one of the best collections of love poems out there. This is one of those books you could sit down a read or to be used as a resource for weddings, cards, and other purposes. It has all the famous poems held tidy in one spot. Great book.

I personally have a large collection of poetry and history books, including those of love letters and relationships. This is a must have for the bookshelf of any collector. It's great to have a poem or quote handy to include in card or note. There are other collections out there, but this is 100 of the most famous and well-known. Great job!

Beautiful poetry-lines were used for decoration for a Sweetheart Cabaret put on by my church.

This is a lovely book with poems ranging from the classical to the quirky, though without disappointment.

At first I thought, oh here is another thrown together "best of" collection....*yawn*. But after reading this collection, I was so glad I picked it up! Finally, an anthology that includes all the classics, plus some pleasant surprises that would normally be overlooked. Hopefully, more "best of" collections will come from the team that put this one together!!