For some people Valentine's Day [2] is easy. They sow Necco Sweethearts like grass seed, believing each little saying imprinted on each little pastel-tinted heart to be meaningful if not oracular. Then there are the conspiracy theorists [3] who claim to have documented proof that the Truffle Makers' Guild [4] and the equally nefarious Greeting Card Poets' Bund [5] are behind the whole charade.
And then there are the rest of us, swinging between hope and despair.
Like on tax day [6], the threat of long dark nights in chilly beds compels most of us to trudge through the traditional rituals [7] of Valentine's Day with as much sincerity as we can muster. Myself, I'm looking forward to filing my return on April 15 [8] because it means that during the last year some actual income actually incame, and given my spotty employment [9] history and the state of the economy, that is something for which I am grateful. But I will dread February 14 as always, and as always it will leave me feeling guilty [10] for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that my spouse has put up with me for far longer than even a delusional narcissist like myself could rightly expect and I know that truckloads of chocolates and whole forests of roses [11] cannot express how lucky I know myself to be.
Below are some poetry collections from Harris County Public Library's shelves. Memorize a sonnet for your beloved.You'll thank me later.
The 100 Best Love Poems of All Time [12] / edited by Leslie Pockell
100 Love Sonnets (Cien sonetos de amor) [13] / Pablo Neruda
Arabian Love Poems: Full Arabic and English Texts [14] / Nizar Kabbam
Bicycles: Love Poems [15]/ Nikki Giovanni
Bleeding Hearts: Love Poems for the Nervous and Highly Strung [16] / edited by Michelle Lovric
[17]
Classic American Love Poems [18]/ the editors of Hippocrene Books
Classic English Love Poems [19] / edited by Emile Capouya
Classic French Love Poems [20] / edited by Lisa Neal
%3English Love Poems [21]/ chosen by John Betjeman
The Faber Book of Love Poems : Love Expected, Love Begun, The Plagues of Loving... [22] / edited with an introduction by Geoffrey Grigson.
Falling Hard: 100 Love Poems by Teenagers [23]/ edited by Betsy Franco
From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger [24] / Lorna Dee Cervantes
Indian Love Poems [25] / selected and edited by Meena Alexander
Ireland's Love Poems: Wonder and a Wild Desire [26] / edited by A. Norman Jeffares
A Lion's Hunger: Poems of First Love [27] / Anne Turner
[28]
The Love Debate Poems of Christine de Pizan [29] / Barbara K. Altmann [electronic resource]
Love Poems from Spain and Spanish America [30] / selected and translated by Perry Higman
Love Poems of Ahmad Shamlu [31] / poems translated by Firoozeh Papan-Matin & Arthur E. Lane
The Love Poems of John Keats: In Praise of Beauty [32] / selected by David Stanford Burr
The Love Poems and Sonnets of William Shakespeare [33] / illustrated by Vera Bock
On Love: Poems [34] / Edward Hirsch
Ovid, The Love Poems [35] / translated by A.D. Melville
Poemas de Amor de Rumi [36] / ediccion de Deepak Chopra
Poems Between Women: Four Centuries of Love, Romantic Friendship and Desire [37] / edited by Emma Donoghue
Poems of Love and Marriage [38] / John Ciardi
%Poems to His Beloved: The Early Love Poems of W. B. Yeats [39] /
A Reasonable Affliction: 1001 Love Poems to Read to Each Other [40] / edited by Sally Ann Berk and James Gordon Wakeman.
A Rock Against the Wind: African American Poems and Letters of Love and Passion [41] / edited by Lindsay Patterson
Rumi, The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing [42] / translations and commentary by Coleman Barks ; with John Moyne ... [et al.]
Sonnets from the Portuguese and Other Love Poems [43] / Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Tình yêu như lửa ấm : thơ tình song ngữ (The Fire of Love): Bilingual Love Poems [44] / Minh Viên
The Treasury of Mexican Love Poems, Quotations and Proverbs [45] / edited and translated by Enriqueta Carrington [in Spanish and English]
Voices of Love [46] / edited by J. D. McClatchy [CD]
What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay [47] / Daniel Mark Epstein
Este é para você, Toots. Eu te amo.
Photo Credit: aliança [48] by Rodrigo Gianesi [49]
- Ahmad Shamly [50]
- chocolate [51]
- conspiracy theories [52]
- Edward Hirsch [53]
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning [54]
- guilt [55]
- income tax [56]
- John Keats [57]
- love poems [58]
- Neruda [59]
- Nikki Giovanni [60]
- Poetry [61]
- roses [62]
- Rumi [63]
- Shakespeare [64]
- St. Vincent Millay [65]
- Valentine's Day [66]
- Yeats [67]
