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Love Speaks Its Name: Gay and Lesbian Love Poems
From Sappho to Shakespeare to Cole Porter–a marvelous and wide-ranging collection of classic gay and lesbian love poetry.
The poets represented here include Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, Gertrude Stein, Federico García Lorca, Djuna Barnes, Constantine Cavafy, Elizabeth Bishop, W. H. Auden, and James Merrill. Their poems of love are among the most perceptive, the most passionate, the wittiest, and the most moving we have. From Michelangelo’s “Love Misinterpreted” to Noël Coward’s “Mad About the Boy,” from May Swenson’s “Symmetrical Companion” to Muriel Rukeyser’s “Looking at Each Other,” these poems take on both desire and its higher love in all its tender or taunting variety.
The poets represented here include Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, Gertrude Stein, Federico García Lorca, Djuna Barnes, Constantine Cavafy, Elizabeth Bishop, W. H. Auden, and James Merrill. Their poems of love are among the most perceptive, the most passionate, the wittiest, and the most moving we have. From Michelangelo’s “Love Misinterpreted” to Noël Coward’s “Mad About the Boy,” from May Swenson’s “Symmetrical Companion” to Muriel Rukeyser’s “Looking at Each Other,” these poems take on both desire and its higher love in all its tender or taunting variety.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published May 15, 2001
39 people are currently reading
1104 people want to read
About the author
J.D. McClatchy
103 books37 followersMcClatchy is an adjunct professor at Yale University and editor of the Yale Review. He also edits the "Voice of the Poet" series for Random House AudioBooks.
His book Hazmat (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) was nominated for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. He has written texts for musical settings, including eight opera libretti, for such composers as Elliot Goldenthal, Daron Hagen, Lowell Liebermann, Lorin Maazel, Tobias Picker, Ned Rorem, Bruce Saylor, and William Schuman. His honors include an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1991). He has also been one of the New York Public Literary Lions, and received the 2000 Connecticut Governor’s Arts Award.
In 1999, he was elected into the membership of The American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in January 2009 he was elected president. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (1987), the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets (1991). He served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1996 until 2003. (Wikipedia)
His book Hazmat (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) was nominated for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. He has written texts for musical settings, including eight opera libretti, for such composers as Elliot Goldenthal, Daron Hagen, Lowell Liebermann, Lorin Maazel, Tobias Picker, Ned Rorem, Bruce Saylor, and William Schuman. His honors include an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1991). He has also been one of the New York Public Literary Lions, and received the 2000 Connecticut Governor’s Arts Award.
In 1999, he was elected into the membership of The American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in January 2009 he was elected president. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (1987), the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets (1991). He served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1996 until 2003. (Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
June 13, 2020
we are so lucky to experience gay love
January 3, 2020
stopped midway through to eat a ripe persimmon over my sink, that is love
April 14, 2012
I read this volume slowly over a number of months, a few poems before bed every night. It was a great way to end the day. The book is organized into several different themed sections that sort of chart the course of a relationship: Longing, Looking, Loving, Ecstasy, Anxiety, and Aftermath. The there is a good variety of poems authored by both men and women. I appreciated that the book reintroduced me to poems buy poets I had not heard of and reintroduced me to old favorites. It's a great book for your nightstand.
July 4, 2019
nothing in this world compares to how tender and beautiful gay love is
June 15, 2014
Great choices and categories. I do wish there were more female entries.
June 5, 2022
What is more beautiful than night
and someone in your arms
- from Frank O'Hara's To You
This is a re-read I've been wanting to get to for a while now; June seems appropriate! I'd forgotten how beautiful the introduction is, by JD McClatchy. You know immediately that the poems were chosen with thought and care.
This collection feels like a journey through time, from the Ancient World through the Renaissance, up into the 19th and 20th centuries. The poems are transportive - some are lush, some are fleeting. There is something to be gotten from each one.
One poet who particularly jumped out at me this time around was Constantine Cavafy - He Asked About the Quality about a man buying handkerchiefs as an excuse to subtly flirt with the shop attendant is filled with so much longing, while also painting a clear portrait of a time when you couldn't be out in public.
Quickly, secretly, so the shopowner sitting
at the back
wouldn't realize what was going on.
But there are so many excellent poems here.
I had a stressful week and couldn't really read much of anything, so it was a relief to lose myself here.
and someone in your arms
- from Frank O'Hara's To You
This is a re-read I've been wanting to get to for a while now; June seems appropriate! I'd forgotten how beautiful the introduction is, by JD McClatchy. You know immediately that the poems were chosen with thought and care.
This collection feels like a journey through time, from the Ancient World through the Renaissance, up into the 19th and 20th centuries. The poems are transportive - some are lush, some are fleeting. There is something to be gotten from each one.
One poet who particularly jumped out at me this time around was Constantine Cavafy - He Asked About the Quality about a man buying handkerchiefs as an excuse to subtly flirt with the shop attendant is filled with so much longing, while also painting a clear portrait of a time when you couldn't be out in public.
Quickly, secretly, so the shopowner sitting
at the back
wouldn't realize what was going on.
But there are so many excellent poems here.
I had a stressful week and couldn't really read much of anything, so it was a relief to lose myself here.
October 1, 2017
This book was a gift of a dear friend of mine. A friend that is always going to stay my friend no matter what.
Ich vermisse dich
Poem
by Frank O'Hara
I will always love you
though I never loved you
a boy smelling faintly of heather
staring up at your window
the passion that enlightens
and stills and cultivates, gone
while I sought your face
to be familiar in the blueness
or to follow your sharp whistle
around a corner into my light
that was love growing fainter
each time you failed to appear
I spent my whole self searching
love which I thought was you
it was mine so briefly
and I never knew it, or you went
I thought it was outside disappearing
but it is disappearing in my heart
like snow blown in a window
to be gone from the world
I will always love you.
Ich vermisse dich
Poem
by Frank O'Hara
I will always love you
though I never loved you
a boy smelling faintly of heather
staring up at your window
the passion that enlightens
and stills and cultivates, gone
while I sought your face
to be familiar in the blueness
or to follow your sharp whistle
around a corner into my light
that was love growing fainter
each time you failed to appear
I spent my whole self searching
love which I thought was you
it was mine so briefly
and I never knew it, or you went
I thought it was outside disappearing
but it is disappearing in my heart
like snow blown in a window
to be gone from the world
I will always love you.
January 5, 2022
The introduction to this collection is a 5/5 stars hands down. I had never given serious thought to why poetry is the ideal medium to convey gay love, but this line opened my eyes and made me cry: “The very conventions of poetry were devised to encode experience, to make it less obvious and thereby more true.” UGH. What a beautiful introduction to this collection. I am quite picky with what poetry I enjoy, so many of these poems slipped past my consciousness, and I was also disappointed by the proportional lack of female poets (although I understand the historical reasons for this). Despite my pickiness, it is still a really beautiful collection that I appreciate deeply.
June 11, 2024
This book is just filled with the most beautiful and sentimental poetry about queer love, joy, pain and death and for that I think it's a must read for every queer poetry lover.
March 11, 2026
wiadomo jak to antologia dosc nierowna ale bylo tam pare absolutnych bangerow
November 20, 2021
When I am dead, even then,♡♡♡
I will still love you, I will wait in these poems,
When I am dead, even then,
I am still listening to you.
I will still be making poems for you
Out of silence;
Silence will be falling into silence,
It is building music.
-Muriel Rukeyser
July 22, 2022
Some of my favs:
- Love Misinterpreted by Michelangelo Buonarroti
- At a Dinner Party by Amy Levy
- Alexandrian Songs by Mikhail Kuzmin
- XVI from Twenty-One Love Poems by Adrienne Rich
- Love Misinterpreted by Michelangelo Buonarroti
- At a Dinner Party by Amy Levy
- Alexandrian Songs by Mikhail Kuzmin
- XVI from Twenty-One Love Poems by Adrienne Rich
March 27, 2021
les dette til kidsa på skolen i stedet for hamsun, herregud
September 25, 2022
Feels like a warm embrace
October 12, 2023
'He was my north, my south, my east and west,
My working week and my sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever:I was wrong.'
My working week and my sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever:I was wrong.'
March 24, 2026
A well assembled collection of poems coming from various eras and crafted in different styles.
The book is divided into several sections representing the many stages of love: Longing, Looking, Loving, Ecstasy, Anxiety, and Aftermath. I find it quite fitting that Ecstasy is the shortest one of these sections, while Loving - the longest. This deliberate structure and the story it tells is a type of poetry in itself.
However, it is unfortunate that there were fewer poems by female authors. And, while the diversity of poetic styles serve well to showcase how timeless and widespread queer poetry is and always has been, some of the more archaic and convoluted works did bore me and thus were, regrettably, skimmed over.
Still, the majority of poems in this collection did prove to be extremely engaging and artful - I've highlighted some of my favourites and their excerpts:
"So be you free to come or stay
Without a reason given,
As free as clouds that blot the light
Across the face of heaven."
from No Obligation by Vita Sackville-West
"I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against
The want of you;
Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
And I scald alone, here, under the fire
Of the great moon."
from The Letter by Amy Lowell
"Desires ungratified
Persist from one life to the next."
from Kimono by James Merrill
"I thought I touched a mind that fitted mine
As bodies fit,
Angle to curve; and my mind throbbed to feel
The pulsing of that wit."
from The Oasis by Naomi Replansky
"In that I loved you, Love, I worshipped you.
In that I worshipped well, I sacrificed.
All of most worth I bound and burnt and slew:
Old peaceful lives; frail flowers; firm friends;
and Christ."
from To Eros by Wilfred Owen
Overall, this is a beautiful book to read slowly, reflecting on each poem and its rich emotion, as well as the difficult yet inspiring history it carries with it.
The book is divided into several sections representing the many stages of love: Longing, Looking, Loving, Ecstasy, Anxiety, and Aftermath. I find it quite fitting that Ecstasy is the shortest one of these sections, while Loving - the longest. This deliberate structure and the story it tells is a type of poetry in itself.
However, it is unfortunate that there were fewer poems by female authors. And, while the diversity of poetic styles serve well to showcase how timeless and widespread queer poetry is and always has been, some of the more archaic and convoluted works did bore me and thus were, regrettably, skimmed over.
Still, the majority of poems in this collection did prove to be extremely engaging and artful - I've highlighted some of my favourites and their excerpts:
"So be you free to come or stay
Without a reason given,
As free as clouds that blot the light
Across the face of heaven."
from No Obligation by Vita Sackville-West
"I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against
The want of you;
Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
And I scald alone, here, under the fire
Of the great moon."
from The Letter by Amy Lowell
"Desires ungratified
Persist from one life to the next."
from Kimono by James Merrill
"I thought I touched a mind that fitted mine
As bodies fit,
Angle to curve; and my mind throbbed to feel
The pulsing of that wit."
from The Oasis by Naomi Replansky
"In that I loved you, Love, I worshipped you.
In that I worshipped well, I sacrificed.
All of most worth I bound and burnt and slew:
Old peaceful lives; frail flowers; firm friends;
and Christ."
from To Eros by Wilfred Owen
Overall, this is a beautiful book to read slowly, reflecting on each poem and its rich emotion, as well as the difficult yet inspiring history it carries with it.
January 22, 2019
Every now and then I fall apart, uh, no. Every now and then I encounter books that literally change my life, or at least push my reading in a very different direction. This is such a book. Because of this collection I spend more than 200 € on other poetry collections, and I have no regrets. It’s an excellent collection of gay and lesbian poetry. The percentage of lesbian poetry could be higher, but I admit it was some of the male poets whose work resonated most for me. I highly recommend this to anyone looking to discover some new poets. And while I have now read all of the poems in this book, I have by no means finished it - I know I will pick it up again and again.
June 15, 2022
"Their poems about love are among the most perceptive and exultant we have. Because their desires have been deemed dangerous, and their lives made difficult, they place a unique value on true love. There are no simple formulas in this book. Pleasure has been wrung from pain, illumination wrested from bitterness and fear, the moment of transcendence stolen from complacent hours. The results may startle or thrill.
But here is the very life of love in all its complexity. Here is the art of poetry -daring, darting, connecting, consoling - at its best. "
J. D. MCCLATCHY
Gorgeous collection. I do wish there was more queer joy in this, the constant reminder of the discretion and fear of discovery took some of the joy out of it for me. We are so much more than fear and hushed secrecy, wish that was reflected more in this collection.
But here is the very life of love in all its complexity. Here is the art of poetry -daring, darting, connecting, consoling - at its best. "
J. D. MCCLATCHY
Gorgeous collection. I do wish there was more queer joy in this, the constant reminder of the discretion and fear of discovery took some of the joy out of it for me. We are so much more than fear and hushed secrecy, wish that was reflected more in this collection.
Read
February 25, 2022A beautiful collection of poetry. It is a quite profound experience to see yourself as clearly represented as I felt while reading these poems.
It works both as an introduction to queer poetry in general for people who haven’t read much of it, but avid poetry readers will also be able to discover new voices in this collection.
It works both as an introduction to queer poetry in general for people who haven’t read much of it, but avid poetry readers will also be able to discover new voices in this collection.
July 30, 2023
I love being queer so much.
This has a lot of good Edwardian and WWI era poets in it, which was especially fun for me.
This has a lot of good Edwardian and WWI era poets in it, which was especially fun for me.
October 20, 2019
A selection of stunning poems placed into five evocative and relatable sections.
January 16, 2020
I really enjoyed this collection of poems, and it introduced me to quite a few new gay and lesbian poets. I appreciated how it was divided into stages of love: longing, looking, loving, ecstasy, anxiety, and aftermath.
My favorite poems in the sections included:
Longing:
•Be Kind to Me by Sappho
•At Baia by H.D.
•He Asked About the Quality by Constantine Cavafy
Looking
•At a Dinner Party by Amy Levy
Loving
•The Bandaged Shoulder by Constantine Cavafy
•I Get a Kick Out of You by Cole Porter
•Keeping Time by Melvin Dixon
Ecstasy
•Shenandoah by Honor Moore
Anxiety
•Losing My Mind by Stephen Sondheim
Aftermath
•Songs From the House of Death, or How to Make it Through to the End of a Relationship by Joy Harjo
My favorite poems in the sections included:
Longing:
•Be Kind to Me by Sappho
•At Baia by H.D.
•He Asked About the Quality by Constantine Cavafy
Looking
•At a Dinner Party by Amy Levy
Loving
•The Bandaged Shoulder by Constantine Cavafy
•I Get a Kick Out of You by Cole Porter
•Keeping Time by Melvin Dixon
Ecstasy
•Shenandoah by Honor Moore
Anxiety
•Losing My Mind by Stephen Sondheim
Aftermath
•Songs From the House of Death, or How to Make it Through to the End of a Relationship by Joy Harjo
January 27, 2021
picked this up a queer bookshop in NYC called 'blue stockings' during the first year of me being openly out of the closet and on a date, it felt like a sign.
it is so affirming to see that gay love has existed for ages and still prevails!
it is so affirming to see that gay love has existed for ages and still prevails!
March 7, 2023
Beautiful! There´s a lot of poems that I am going to read again and again. And so many lines that where so beautiful!
An absolute stunning collection that I am very happy about reading!
Just so good!
An absolute stunning collection that I am very happy about reading!
Just so good!
January 2, 2016
Hadn't read Funeral Blues since GCSE English, forgotten how excellent it is.
March 10, 2020
I skipped some of the poems. I might be biased, but I thought the wlw poems were all better than the mlm ones.
March 18, 2023
Stunning collection 💕
September 7, 2023
I truly love everything gay
May 27, 2021
A collection of poems either by LGBT poets and/or featuring presumed same-sex romances. There's really nothing specifically LGBT about the poems themselves, though. Love is love is love is love is love is love is love, as a great man said. They capture specific and universal experiences of the stages of love, but the collection is much richer, more nuanced, and eclectic than the staid and generic public-domain selections that make up the "Love Poems" volume in this series, whose contents are so predictable there's very little life in them. The poems here are not all contemporary by any measure - they go as far back as Sappho - but the juxtaposition of old and new gives new life to both. This collection was thoughtfully assembled and very touching.
Read
May 20, 2021Favs:
- A Glimpse by Walt Whitman
- Episode of Hands by Hart Crane
- The Coastguard Station by Henri Cole
- "When I heard at the close of the day" by Walt Whitman
- Having a Coke With You by Frank O'Hara
- Night Gleam by Allen Ginsberg
- A Light Left On by May Sarton
- "Ah, Love, you smell of petroleum" by Judy Grahn
- The Taxi by Amy Lowell
- One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
- Turning Forty in the 90's by Melvin Dixon
- Apologia by Oscar Wilde
- Songs from the House of Death, or How to Make it Through to the End of a Relationship by Joy Harjo
- A Glimpse by Walt Whitman
- Episode of Hands by Hart Crane
- The Coastguard Station by Henri Cole
- "When I heard at the close of the day" by Walt Whitman
- Having a Coke With You by Frank O'Hara
- Night Gleam by Allen Ginsberg
- A Light Left On by May Sarton
- "Ah, Love, you smell of petroleum" by Judy Grahn
- The Taxi by Amy Lowell
- One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
- Turning Forty in the 90's by Melvin Dixon
- Apologia by Oscar Wilde
- Songs from the House of Death, or How to Make it Through to the End of a Relationship by Joy Harjo
Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews