Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, so we have dusted off our favorite love poems to share with you.
Melisa Garcia | Poetry Editor
“A un Desconocido” by Lorna Dee Cervantes
Where is your skin, parting me?
Where is the cowlick under your kiss
teasing into purple valleys? Where
are your wings, the imaginary tail
and its exercise?
Lucy Burns | Associate Editor
“Lines for Painting on Grains of Rice” by Craig Arnold
Jill Dehnert | Editor in Chief
“Sonnet LXVI” by Pablo Neruda
the fire. I love you only because it’s you
I love; I hate you no end, and hating you
bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
is that I do not see you but love you
Diana Filar | Graduate Reader
“Love at First Sight” by Wislawa Szymborska
They’re both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is more beautiful,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
Catherine Hubka | Graduate Reader
“How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
Lucas Shepherd | Graduate Reader
“Sonnet XIV” by Pablo Neruda
I want to do with you
what spring does with the cherry trees.
Charlie Wormhoudt | Graduate Reader
“The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” by Ezra Pound
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever, and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?
Ana June | Graduate Reader
“A Dream Within a Dream” by Edgar Allen Poe
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Aaron Reeder | Graduate Reader
“Of the Surface of Things” by Wallace Stevens
In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four
hills and a cloud.
