They have something of a bad reputation, don't they? Carrying a whiff of the sentimental, the overwrought, the one-dimensional hyperbole? The scent of the idealized, the self-serving, the hyper-adjectival? Love is not only a difficult emotion to articulate, but a difficult one to imagine.
Nonetheless, a host of authors over at The Guardian -- from Ahdaf Soueif to Jeannette Winterson to Seamus Heaney to Hilary Mantel -- choose their favorite poems of love. So does The Boston Globe: fourteen poems for February 14. The Chicago Tribune looks at the "poetry" of missed connections. And the Poetry Foundation has put together a "sampler" of classic and contemporary poems that it invites you to (it says with a sly wink) share.
And here is one of my favorites, translated by Mark Eisner, that appears in none of those special-for-Valentine's-Day features.
One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII
By Pablo Neruda
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