Collection

It’s Complicated: Love Poems

Love, I’m done with you!

Love isn’t all roses and candlelight. Love is complicated, and poetry has a unique ability to express the power and pain of that mess of feeling. This selection of poems shows love’s less idealistic side in all its difficulty, humor, grief, and possibility.

For more poems about love, explore our archive.

Anti-love

- [Sonnet] You jerk you didn't call me up
  Bernadette Mayer
- What Isn’t Mine
  Jill Alexander Essbaum
- Epithalament
  Brenda Shaughnessy
- from “An Attempt at Jealousy”
  Marina Tsvetaeva
- Modern Love
  John Keats
- Farewell Love and all thy Laws for ever
  Sir Thomas Wyatt
- The Editor’s Ex
  Caitlin Doyle
- Song: “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more”
  William Shakespeare
- A Fixed Idea
  Amy Lowell
- Never give all the Heart
  William Butler Yeats
- To my Inconstant Mistress
  Thomas Carew

Breakup

- After Love
  Sara Teasdale
- Movement Song
  Audre Lorde
- A Pity, We Were Such a Good Invention
  Yehuda Amichai
- I’ll Open the Window
  Anna Swir
- The Glass Essay
  Anne Carson
- when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story
  Gwendolyn Brooks
- The Almost Love Poem of Eloise and Kofi
  Brian Gyamfi
- The Flurry
  Sharon Olds
- Love, I'm Done with You
  Ross Gay
- Cuckoldom
  BJ Ward
- After Eden
  Rachel Wetzsteon
- Oh God
  Michelle Tea
- Waiting for This Story to End Before I Begin Another
  Jan Heller Levi
- Meditations in an Emergency
  Frank O’Hara
- ain't that easy
  erica lewis
- For a Traveler
  Jessica Greenbaum
- December
  Michael Miller
- The Darker Sooner
  Catherine Wing
- Poem
  Jill Alexander Essbaum
- The Nails
  W. S. Merwin
- A Communication Which the Author Had to London, Before She Made Her Will
  Isabella Whitney
- Neutral Tones
  Thomas Hardy
- the smell
  Emelihter Kihleng

Irony & Humor

- The Quiet World
  Jeffrey McDaniel
- A Maul for Bill and Cindy’s Wedding
  Gary Snyder
- Love Explained
  Jennifer Michael Hecht
- The Wounded Cupid. Song
  Anacreon
- Windchime
  Tony Hoagland
- Video Blues
  Mary Jo Salter
- Love Song
  Dorothy Parker
- Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
  William Shakespeare
- The Lady's Yes
  Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- To a Young Lady, With Some Lampreys
  John Gay

Heartache & Vexation

- A Valentine
  Robert Graves
- Annabel Lee
  Edgar Allan Poe
- Permanent Press
  Alice Friman
- Stolen Moments
  Kim Addonizio
- You left me – Sire – two Legacies – (713)
  Emily Dickinson
- “Time does not bring relief; you all have lied”
  Edna St. Vincent Millay
- Vietnam Ghost Story: Đà Lạt Lovers
  Hoa Nguyen
- “No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved”
  Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib
- Semele Recycled
  Carolyn Kizer
- Endless Summer
  Nate Pritts
- Blues for Almost Forgotten Music
  Roxane Beth Johnson
- Still Start
  Kay Ryan
- Snowshoe to Otter Creek
  Stacie Cassarino
- Hour
  Reginald Gibbons
- History
  Aleida Rodríguez
- Semi-Splendid
  Tracy K. Smith
- Absences
  Donald Justice
- No Second Troy
  William Butler Yeats
- As from a Quiver of Arrows
  Carl Phillips
- What’s Left
  W. S. Di Piero
- Anniversary
  Louise Glück
- Yours & Mine
  Alice Fulton
- Somewhere or Other
  Christina Rossetti
- Venice, Unaccompanied
  Monica Youn
- A Broken Appointment
  Thomas Hardy
- palindrome
  Nate Marshall
- Later
  Raymond Luczak
- “If no love is, O God, what fele I so?”
  Petrarch
- A Farewell to False Love
  Sir Walter Raleigh
- Claustrophilia
  Alice Fulton

Unrequited & Pining

- I Feel Horrible. She Doesn’t
  Richard Brautigan
- Love and Death
  Lord Byron (George Gordon)
- The Raven
  Edgar Allan Poe
- My Life’s Delight
  Thomas Campion
- What to Say Upon Being Asked to Be Friends
  Julian Talamantez Brolaski
- A Bird in Bishopswood
  John Tickhill
- When Last We Parted
  Catherine Maria Fanshawe
- The Breather
  Billy Collins
- The Consolations of Sociobiology
  Bill Knott
- Sometimes with One I Love
  Walt Whitman
- Solitary Vice
  Valerie Wetlaufer
- A Bronze God, or a Letter on Demand
  Clifton Gachagua
- Nocturnal Admissions
  Chip Livingston
- Virginity
  Anna Swir
- Never the Time and the Place
  Robert Browning
- Poem
  Lucy Ives
- The Dream
  John Donne
- Song: “Take, oh take those lips away”
  William Shakespeare
- I Dreamed That I Was Old
  Stanley Kunitz
- They Flee From Me
  Sir Thomas Wyatt
- Another Insane Devotion
  Gerald Stern

Loneliness

- The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator
  Anne Sexton
- Dear One Absent This Long While
  Lisa Olstein
- I Don't Miss It
  Tracy K. Smith
- Winter Love
  Linda Gregg
- The friend
  Marge Piercy
- Sonnet
  Robert Hass
- Rain
  Kazim Ali
- In Golden Gate Park That Day . . .
  Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- The Jewel Stairs’ Grievance
  Li Bai
- Such Is the Sickness of Many a Good Thing
  Robert Duncan
- Evening Lounge
  Afaa Michael Weaver

Domesticity & Relationships

- The Ache of Marriage
  Denise Levertov
- Wife
  Ada Limón
- About God & Things
  Wanda Coleman
- Dyed Carnations
  Robyn Schiff
- Marriage
  Ellen Bass
- Baked Goods
  Aimee Nezhukumatathil
- Sonnet 138: When my love swears that she is made of truth
  William Shakespeare
- A Man's Requirements
  Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- Who's on First?
  Lloyd Schwartz
- [I married]
  Lorine Niedecker
- A Marriage
  Robert Creeley
- To have without holding
  Marge Piercy

p1What Isn’t Mine

p1from “An Attempt at Jealousy”

p1The Almost Love Poem of Eloise and Kofi

p1The Flurry

p1Cuckoldom

p1Meditations in an Emergency

p1For a Traveler

p1Poem

p1the smell

p1Permanent Press

p1Stolen Moments

p1“No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved”

p1Still Start

p1Hour

p1Semi-Splendid

p1What’s Left

p1The Breather

p1Another Insane Devotion

p1Dyed Carnations

p1Marriage

What Isn’t Mine

from “An Attempt at Jealousy”

The Almost Love Poem of Eloise and Kofi

The Flurry

Cuckoldom

Meditations in an Emergency

For a Traveler

Poem

the smell

Permanent Press

Stolen Moments

“No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved”

Still Start

Hour

Semi-Splendid

What’s Left

The Breather

Another Insane Devotion

Dyed Carnations

Marriage