The Hell with Love: Poems to Mend a Broken Heart

This collection, beautifully assembled and edited, helped me so damn much on Valentine's Day (especially hard day when you're still getting over losing someone you love). The poems are superb and superbly apt, the editors' brief essays are helpful and wonderfully understanding . Even though most of the essays are aimed at a female readership, a male reader can benefit too. Highest possible recommendation.

An inspired, superlative collection of poems, wittily introduced and neatly packed into a well-designed little black book.The tellingly ironic candy hearts on the book's black cover hint that this is not a selection of drippily sentimental rhymes. The choice of works is inspired by a bright, smart, worldwise sensibility. Not only Shakespeare, Donne, Dickinson, Yeats, and Auden ... but also Elizabeth Bishop, Dorothy Parker, Louise Gluck, Denise Levertov, May Swenson, Marge Piercy, and Billy Collins. THE HELL WITH LOVE is every bit as refreshing and recuperative as a brisk walk on a clear, windy day. A delightful gift for the heartbroken, world-weary, closeted romantic in us all. Perfect for Valentine's Day -- or 364 others.

A charming collection whose only problem is the title. The title implies that the authors are angry and loveless when in fact they demonstrate a depth of understanding the full gamut of emotions surrounding the commitments people make to one another. My 20-year-old daughter (who knows less about poetry than I do) handed me me this book with the off-putting caveat "You probably won't get it, but I loved this!" I loved it too -- for the breath of the collection of poems, the witty and incisive commentary before each chapter, and mostly its affirmation of the beauty and bounty of finding love at any age and at any cost. I highly recommend that mothers give this to their daughters, fathers to their sons for Valentine's Day, but tell them first that this nifty book is, despite the cautionary title, a wise and witty book about how careful they should be to find and keep someone to love.

This book is hilarious, profound, accessible, and absolutely perfect. Esselman and Velez break down break-ups into all of the stages you've experienced but never had the guts (or the sanity, at any given moment) to name--stages like rage, self-hatred, relapse, and moving on. Their commentary for the poems in each section is as intelligent and down-to-earth as the poems they choose. Read this, if you've ever even THOUGHT about being in--or out of--love. You'll find yourself entranced by the good poetry and comforted by the fact that no matter how you are trying to deal with a love lost, you aren't alone, or crazy: William Shakespeare, John Donne, Lucilie Clifton, and Billy Collins have all been members of the same lonely hearts club at one time or another...and, it seems, they've all come out laughing on the other side.

Someone just gave me this book in an attempt to cheer me up after a bad love affair and it really worked! The poems are great, but the introductions are what really make this book fun. I laughed and cried, (just what I needed). I'm buying it for all of my girlfriends who are dateless this Valentine's Day.