The Academy of American Poets, the producer of Poets.org—one of the world’s most popular online resources for poems with tens of millions of visits each year—invites you to share love poems this Valentine’s Day. Here are twenty-one selections from our collection for the upcoming occasion:
Classic:
W. H. Auden, “The More Loving One”
Djuna Barnes, “Serenade”
Willa Cather, “Evening Song”
E. E. Cummings, “Amores (II)”
Federico García Lorca, “[To find a kiss of yours]”
Sadakichi Hartmann, “Why I Love Thee?”
Claude McKay, “To O. E. A.”
Frank O’Hara, “Having a Coke with You”
Jalal al-Din Rumi, “What Was Told, That”
Bertrand N. O. Walker, “An Indian Love Song”
Contemporary:
Diannely Antigua, “Anniversary”
Anne Carson, “O Small Sad Ecstasy of Love”
Meg Day, “Once All the Hounds Had Been Called Home”
Heid E. Erdrich, “How”
Benjamin Garcia, “Bliss Point or What Can Best Be Achieved by Cheese”
Christopher Gilbert, “How the Stars Understand Us”
Maureen N. McLane, “Syntax”
Anis Mojgani, “Hon or We have both traveled from the other side of some hill, one side of which we may wish we could forget”
Xandria Phillips, “Edmonia Lewis and I Weather the Storm”
Adrienne Rich, “Twenty-One Love Poems [Poem III]”
Sonia Sanchez, “Haiku [for you]”