Vision 

The same know contentment,
for beauty is their lover,
and beauty is never absent 
from this world. 
~ St. Teressa of Avila, saint and poet

Give me an hour and I'll make a lifetime out of it. ~ Ingrid Bergman 

Love one another, but make not a bond of love: 
Let it rather be a moving sea
between the shores of your souls. ~ Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Lips that taste of tears, they say, 
Are the best for kissing. ~ Dorothy Parker

Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly. ~ Rose Franken


For one human being to love another that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof; the work for which all other work is but preparation. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind. ~ Nora Ephron

Love and understanding never condemn but always seek to help and encourage. ~ Meher Baba

When I think of you, 
fireflies in the marsh rise
like the soul's jewels,
lost to eternal longing, 
abandoning my body

~ Izumi Shikibu (970-1030)

The new moon stirs pangs of love. ~ Vidyapati

To find the woman of your dreams and possibly even create her - first be the man of hers. ~ Steven A. Guerrero


There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread. ~ Mother Teresa

You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have really lived, are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love. ~ Henry Drummond

Erotic love is one of the highest forms of contemplation. ~ Kenneth Rexroth

Love does not consist in gazing at each other but looking together in the same direction. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

STRAWBERRIES

There were never strawberries 
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open French window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you
let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense

and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills

let the storm wash the plates

~ Edwin Morgan

Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away. ~ Elbert Hubbard

We can only learn to love by loving. ~ Iris Murdoch

Eros seizes and shakes my very soul
like the wind on the mountain
shaking ancient oaks. ~ Sappho

To be in love is to surpass one's self. ~ Oscar Wilde

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

The deeper that sorrow carves
into your being, the more joy
you can contain. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Busy in the Spring

Bright moonlight shines thorough the trees. 
In a rich brocade, the flowers bloom. 

How can I not think of you―
alone, lonely, working at my loom. 

~ Tzu Yeh (4th century)

Life is the first gift, 
love is the second 
and understanding the third.
~ Marge Piercy

Love is the master key that opens the gates to happiness. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Quarrels in France strengthen a love affair, in America they end it. ~ Ned Rorem

Love talked about can be easily turned aside, but love demonstrated is irresistible. ~ W. Stanley Mooneyham

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous. ~ Ingrid Bergman

To ―

The fountains mingle with the river
   And the rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
   With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
   All things by a law divine
in one spirit meet and mingle.
   Why not I with thine?―

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
   And the waves clasp one another; 
No sister-flower would be forgiven
   If it disdained its brother; 
and the sunlight clasps the earth
   And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
   If thou kiss not me? 

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words. ~ Unknown

And I would hear yet once before I perish The voice which was my music -Speak to me! ~ George Gordon Lord Byron

Confidence is the sexiest thing a woman can have.  ~ Aimee Mullins

Anyone can look at others eyes, but Lovers can see into each other's souls through the eyes. ~ Larry Latta

I believe if I should die,
And you should kiss my eyelids when I lie
Cold, dead, and dumb to all the world contains,
The folded orbs would open at thy breath,
And, from its exile in the isles of death,
Life would come gladly back along my veins.

From Creed by Mary Ashley Townsend

Love is an infinite sky! ~ Osho

When love is your greatest weakness, you will be the strongest person in the world. ~ Garman Wold

       ALICANTE

   An orange on the table
   Your dress on the rug
       And you in my b ed
Sweet present of the present
        Cool of night
   Warmth of my life. 

~ Jacques Prévert, 
Translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Love is a great wrecker of peace of mind. ~ Susan Cheever, As Good As I Could Be

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; 
loving someone deeply gives you courage. ~ Lao Tzu

The lips of the one I love are my perpetual pleasure... ~ Hafiz

Sex itself is a substitute for God. When we desire another human being sexually, 
we are really only trying to fill our longing for ecstasy and union 
with the infinite. ~ Cathryn Michon 


All you need is love. ~ John Lennon

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet. ~ Plato

Meeting at Night

The gray seas and the long black land;
and the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage. ~ Lao Tzu

Never go to bed mad: 
stay up and fight. ~ Phyllis Diller

Each morning as I awaken your the reason I smile, Your the reason I love. ~ Jerry Burton

In former days we'd both agree
that you were me, and I was you. 
What has now happened to us two, 
That you are you, and I am me? 

~ Bhartrhari, Translated from the- Sanskrit by
John Brough

A heart that loves is always young. ~ Greek Proverb

For every man who neglects to impart kind and loving words, both verbal and written, there is a woman who suffers greatly. ~ Steven Andrew Guerrero

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. ~ Mignon McLaughlin 

This is the time to speak the word of appreciation. ~ Grenville Kleiser, author

Poetry Reviews

Love Poems

But true Love is a durable fire
In the mind ever burning;
Never sick, never old, never dead,
From itself never turning. ~ Walter Ralegh

I am naturally drawn to tiny books and this book was no exception. I saw it and instantly fell in love with the red library binding and gold embossing on the fabric cover. This is one of those books you want to carry around with you in your pocket to read on a sunny day while sitting on a park bench.

While most of the poems were new to me, I did find lines to make any poet drown in the pure beauty of words. "In My Sky at Twilight" is a paraphrase of the 30th poem in Raindranath Tagore's The Gardener. The images are lush and mingle emotion with nature. "In Former Days" by Bhartrhari (5th Century) is witty and beautiful in its simplicity. Two lovers are so in love they forget their separateness and then drift back to being "you" and "me." The poem is a mere four lines and yet it provides a intimate look at how lovers feel when in love and when they drift apart. I loved a few lines in "The Palanquin" where a butterfly lands on delicate skin and transfers colors onto the lover's skin.

The poems are divided into 7 sections:

Definitions and Persuasions
Love and Poetry
Praising the Loved One
Pleasures and Pains
Fidelity and Inconstancy
Absence, Estrangement and Parting
Love Past

You may recognize poems by Lord Byron, Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman and Dorothy Parker. I was pleasantly surprised by poems by Leconte De Lisle, Pablo Neruda and Dioskorides.

You will find a wide range of love poems. This book contains selections from ancient China to modern America. These poems present the universal experience of the human heart.

~The Rebecca Review

A Book of Love Poetry

We only part to meet again..., February 26, 2005

A Book of Love Poetry is filled with poems you may have met before in your studies at school or while reading books of poetry. Who could forget "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" or "How Do I Love thee? Let me count the ways."

There is comfort in the familiarity of Christopher Marlowe's The Passionate Shepherd To His Love where he shows an intuitive understanding of love's fantasy. However, I was not prepared for Sir Walter Ralegh's "Her Reply," an almost sarcastic retort, and yet a beautiful poem. I prefer the fantasy Christopher Marlowe paints with his poetic description of love and the two poems do explore the contrast between fantasy and reality. Cecil Day Lewis copies the first two lines from Christopher Marlowe's poem, as if we wouldn't notice.

Wit and humor make their appearance in Sally In Our Alley and the last few lines are cute. Many of the poems may make you question the entire idea of love being blind. Is love blind or does love open our eyes to the beauty of existence? Are we not truly blind before we fully love?

If you read a book of poetry and find one poem you love, then I think it is worth purchasing the book. The rare discovery is worth the effort and Edwin Morgan's "Strawberries" was such a discovery. I especially loved the ending of the poem filled with summer lightning and rain.

the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar

Jacques Prévert's Alicante is a sweet portrait of love in six lines and leaves a lasting impression. Octavio Paz also explores touch in a memorable six lines. Both poems prove their point. A short poem can be more profound than unending lines of complicated phrases. A quick, stunning recollection of love seems to leave a more lasting impression. Bhartrhari also presents a poem of four lines to describe love's initial binding power and time's power to separate lovers.

Pablo Neruda's poetry presents a vivid contrast to many of the poems in this book. His poems are an enthralling blend of sensuality and rhythm.

Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.
Pinned by the sun between solstice
and equinox, drowsy and tangled together

The Introduction presents ideas about the relationship between creative and sexual energy. Do poets have more intense emotional moments throughout their lives or are they just better at assembling words into evocative phrases as they gaze with an inward eye and are compelled to create? The poems are organized in eight main sections:

Intimations - Intimate portraits of women by the men who adore their beauty.

Declarations - "She walks in beauty, like the night..."

Persuasions - Convincing women to love while they are young and other romantic notions...

Celebrations - Temptations, songs and kisses.

Aberrations - Deviations from the expected course of love, rejections and indifference.

Separations - Poems of loss, farewell, future considerations and longing when lovers are apart.

Desolations - Heartbreaking poems of loss and remembrance with splashes of beauty and moments of unending hope. Yehuda Amichai's Quick and Bitter has a beautiful conclusion.

Reverberations - Memories of eating strawberries before a storm and kisses remembered.

While reading A Book of Love Poems, I found many new poems to enjoy and the copy I purchased was already dog-eared and well loved. While my copy is a paperback version, I would much prefer a hardcover edition. The Index of Poets and the Index of Titles and First Lines is especially helpful if you are studying a particular poet or you are looking for a favorite poem.

If you are looking for a book of poems to inspire romance and you enjoy selections with a more traditional appeal, Jon Stallworthy's book has much to offer. If you are looking for erotic poems, there are a few selections, although I'd recommend The Erotic Spirit edited by Sam Hamill.

~The Rebecca Review

The Erotic Spirit

Erotic love is one of the highest forms of contemplation. ~Kenneth Rexroth

The Erotic Spirit is a collection of beautiful poems mingling together in a land of sensual nirvana. The minute you enter the pages of this stunning anthology, you will find you have entered a sacred sanctuary of desire. You may find yourself startled by the mirroring of emotions. When Sappho (6th century BCE) wrote: "Eros seizes and shakes my very soul like the wind on the mountain shaking ancient oaks," did she imagine women in the future knowing exactly what she was talking about?

Sam Hamill has included moments of beauty to blur the distinction between spirituality and sensuality. The two become one in a swirling of seductive soul expressions.

Rarely have I read a "Preface" so profound in content and so enlightening in regards to poetry. The "Notes on the Poets" section is also essential to your enjoyment and I was so pleased Sam Hamill included information on each poet. Suddenly a poem becomes all the more significant when you read about Sappho jumping from a cliff because her love was not returned.

Sam Hamill is a poet and the author of over thirty books of poetry, translations and essays. He shows a deep understanding of erotic love and has included poems of longing, passion, compassion, sexual love, adoration, devotion and ecstasy.

There are poems from Egypt, Greece, China, Japan, Turkey, India, America, England, Thailand, Mexico, Spain, France, Lebanon, Pakistan, Estonia and Costa Rica.

Featured Poets: Sappho, Anakreon, Asklepiados, Praxilla, Rufinus, Marcus Argentarius, Catullus, Philodemos, Ovid, Petronius Arbiter, Tzu Yeh, Agathias Scholoasticus, Cometas Chartularius, Paulus Silentiarius, Li Po, Otomo No Yakamochi, Yuan Chen, Li Ho, Ariwara No Narihira, Li Hsun, Ono No Komachi, Izumi Shikibu, Liu Yung, Samuel Ha-Nagid, Ou-Yang Hsiu, Mahadeviyakka, Jelaluddin Rumi, Francesco Petrarch, Ikkyu Sojun, Kabir, Vidyapati, Mirabai, William Shakespeare, Bihari, Robert Herrick, Anne Bradstreet, Se Praj, Andrew Marvell, John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, William Blake, John Keats, Walt Whitman, Charles Baudelaire, Emily Dickinson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Antonnio Machado, Yosano Akiko, Anna Akhmatova, Pablo Neruda, Kenneth Rexroth, Hayden Carruth, Denise Levertov, Carolyn Kizer, Robert Creeley, Adrienne Rich, Roberto Sosa, Robert Kelly, Lucille Clifton, Jaan Kaplinski, Sam Hamill, Gioconda Belli, Olga Broumas, Maurya Simon and Dorianne Laux.

Within these pages there are poems by an Indian Princess who became a saint, poems by one of the most influential poets in history and even poems from a woman who is considered to be the first poet in America.

Poems to Adore:

Plum Blossoms - A poem describing longing while lovers are apart. The clouds become love notes as a poet drifts in an orchid boat.

Yuan Chen's Remembering - Passion, daydreams and mountains keeping lovers apart.

Fires Run Through My Body - An anonymous Kwakiutl poem describing love as pain. There is a similar theme in Yuan Chen's Remembering where pain is embraced.

The Erotic Spirit will make you breathless! Some of these poems stir up such deep emotions it is as if the poems burst from the pen in order to experience a union with the page on which they were being written.

100 Stars!

~The Rebecca Review

The 100 Best Love Poems

Elegant and Classic, March 30, 2006 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