Love Poems by Women: An Anthology of Poetry from Around the World and Through the Ages

Love Poems by Women is a great collection of love poems by women from around the world. Some of the poems are from female poets of long ago, so that makes them kind of hard to understand but if you take the time to read them, you want be disappointed. I plan to buy some poetry books of some of the poets in this book to add to my collection.

This book is one of my literary treasures. I have opened it often--to practice saying the unsayable, quoting poems and lines to create a unique friendship bond and also to offer comfort (and righteous anger) in the wake of a broken heart, and to simply gain an introduction to some wonderfully worthy poets.Its simple and forthright appearance belies its impact. An unreserved 5 stars.I also heartily recommend The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono No Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan; Fried Green Tomatoes by Fannie Flagg; Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories (of Angela Carter); The Awakening and Selected Stories (by Kate Chopin); and collected or selected poetry by Dorothy Parker, H.D. [Hilda Doolittle], Sappho, Sara Teasdale, Amy Lowell, and Emily Dickinson.Thank you for reading my review.

The book carries a very broad sample of poets and styles, ranging anywhere from Elizabeth I to Dorothy Parker, and just about every possible style and writer in between. I've found some poems that I consider among my favorites now that I would have not otherwise encountered - particularly from different cultures.The poems are also split up into into various 'messages' of love - while love is the common theme, these aren't all sugary sonnets or words of eternal bliss. It truly captures the various aspects of love. Wanting, having, and loss in their most acute states, in styles most versatile.