Love Poems

by Carol Ann Duffy

Whether writing of longing or seduction, of passion, adultery, or simple, everyday acts of love, Carol Ann Duffy perfectly captures the truth of each experience. Love Poems contains some of her most popular poems and, always imaginative, heartfelt and direct, displays all the eloquence and skill that have made her one of the foremost poets of her time.

Genres: Poetry, Romance, LGBT, Fiction, Lesbian, Adult, Queer

54 pages, Hardcover

First published December 17, 2009

About the author

Dame Carol Ann Duffy, DBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in May 2009.

She is the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly LGBT person to hold this position.

Her collections include Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award; and Rapture (2005), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize.

Her poems address issues such as oppression, gender, and violence, in an accessible language that has made them popular in schools.

Reviews

[Mark Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

'If the darkening sky could lift
more than one hour from this day
there are words I would never have said
nor have heard you say'.

I first encountered Duffy's work over a decade and a half ago as a petulant high school pupil, sat in a sweaty English Literature classroom heaving with savage adolescent machismo. Regretfully, I didn't resonate then, barely even listened - much preferring the derisive and crass verses of Larkin.

Eighteen years later, with (hopefully) a tad more cultivated attitude, outlook and understanding; Duffy's poems are bitsy masterpieces, lapping them up in a frenzy - powerfully relatable, unnerving, hysterical.

In Love Poems, Duffy deftly depicts the beauty, brutality and complexity of love in all its forms: desire, dejection, pain, longing, control, zeal, lust, cordiality.

Standouts from this collection include:

The Darling Letters: '...the heart thudding like a spade on buried bones'

Drunk: 'unseen frogs belch in the damp grass'

The Windows: 'It's a Wonderful Life. How do you learn it?'

Deliliah: '...but I cannot be gentle, or loving, or tender. I have to be strong. What is the cure?'

Close: 'The ghosts of ourselves, behind and before us, throng in the mirror, blind, laughing and weeping. They know who we are'.

[❀ annie ❀ · Rating 5 out of 5]

i'm a sucker for love poems and for carol ann duffy so of course i was gonna rate this five stars. just so pretty. they're pretty accessible poems so you don't need to be a poetry nerd to enjoy them (and i'm definitely not, as much as i'd like to be) but some of the lines just hit you right in the chest. ugh, i just love love, you know?

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want you and you are not here. I pause
in this garden, breathing the colour thought is
before language into still air. Even your name
is a pale ghost and, though I exhale it again
and again, it will not stay with me. Tonight
I make you up, imagine you, your movements clearer
than the words I have you say you said before.

Wherever you are now, inside my head you fix me
with a look, standing here whilst cool late light
dissolves into the earth. I have got your mouth wrong,
but still it smiles. I hold you closer, miles away,
inventing love, until the calls of nightjars
interrupt and turn what was to come, was certain,
into memory. The stars are filming us for no one.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress
bids me wear them, warm then, until evening
when I'll brush her hair. At six, I place them
round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her,

resting in the yellow room, contemplating silk
or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself
whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering
each pearl. Slack on my neck, Her rope.

She's beautiful. I dream about her
in my attic bed; picture her dancing
with tall men, puzzled by my faint, persistent scent
beneath her French perfume, milky stones.

[Bookish Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't want to love this so much, I was so resistant to Carol Ann Duffy (knowing her only from her agonising poem on Medusa from my school days). I was resitant to the idea of a book of poems dedicated to love - for fear it would make me cringe and curl my toes uncomfortably. But of course I accept that love is one of the most powerful, heady, all-consuming emotions - it's hard not to write love into poetry when it has a hold over everything we experience as human beings.

I love that she draws her influence from biblical stories and mythology - entwining them with her own experience of touch, loss and togetherness. I want to read this over and over while lying on the floor with my legs swinging in the air like a love-struck, doe-eyed teenager. I underlined so many lines in pencil.

I loved her poems 'Text', 'Tea' and 'Girlfriends' best - musing on the simple act of texting someone and feeling that thrill of a back-and-forth conversation in small words, on the act of pouring tea and touching the warm body of someone you desire on a September night. These are poems that made me feel elated, stopped my breath, made me want to lie in my bed all day and stare into space. Wonderful.

[Liam O'Leary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not an original collection, and it shows. Most are poems about love, but not love poems. Duffy is a consistently mediocre poet to me, a great starting point for showing how to write a direct and simple poem, but without the punch that makes it worth reading.

However, this did have some gems, my favourite Duffy poem to date (and probably ever at this rate) is White Writing.

[Kirsty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Poems was another library book which I could not walk past without picking up. I adore Carol Ann Duffy’s poems, and am slowly working my way through all of her volumes. All of the work which is collected in this book comes from other volumes, some of which I have already read, but it is a wonderful idea to collect poetry which has such a central theme together.

Throughout, Duffy’s writing is startling and drips with emotion. She has the knack of painting incredibly vivid pictures in the mind by using just a handful of elegantly crafted phrases. I love the different poetical techniques which she uses, from simple rhymes to reimagining Shakespeare’s sonnets. Gorgeous ideas are woven in – for example, in the poem ‘Deportation’:

“We will tire each other out, making our homes
in one another’s arms.”

Duffy examines every aspect of love: relationships, sex, loss, imagining future families, memories, and adultery, amongst others. Love Poems is a very short volume, but it is a very beautiful one, and I really want to purchase my own copy now so that I can dip into it whenever I like.

[lucy 🌀 · Rating 5 out of 5]

C.A.D is becoming a favourite poet of mine, this collection was exceptional 💗

[Shriya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Random Personal Anecdote (Because I like to be Random) : You're not always on a holiday to a country you once lived in and meeting your best penfriend and her husband whilst there for a few hours, when you suddenly land into
a charity shop and find an anthology of a poet you discovered only two days ago while watching a random programme on rare breeds of pigs and witch burnings? I know I am not and I don't. What's less likely is you buying that anthology on an impulse! However, I can safely say that today I have been there and done that. In Oxfam at Nottinghill in London, after making up my mind that NOTHING is worth my money, I finally picked up this book and I was barely past the Let-me-stroke-your-lovely-embossed-book-jacket phase when I opened it and read one of the many verses inside and voíla!

This book and some of the verses in it were meant for me, for this visit to England, for some of the feelings and thoughts I was going through. Now while that makes up just 5% of the anthology roughly, I am so glad I discovered this little book at all! And boy, am I glad I watched a random programme on the tele the other night!

What a find! And oh, what a feeling!

[Georgie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This moody, middle-aged, Scottish lesbian is possibly the best poet on the planet when it comes to love. She just reads the room, and your desire and hurt, and somehow scribes it with perfect brutality and honesty. I can't decide if she makes me feel better or worse but mostly she kills me. Ded. Some bangers include 'If I was dead' (I am) 'Syntax', 'Tea' 'Miles Away' and for anyone who has lay awake longing for someone's love 'World's Wide Night' finds words better than my fumbling fingers and heart ever could.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never devoured a poetry book so quickly before. This woman is WONDERFUL and I would give nearly all the poems in this collection a 10/10 💓💓💓

[Kayla Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

everyone who likes poetry should read this and everyone who doesn’t like poetry should read this

[alia · Rating 3 out of 5]

|"I want to call you thou, the sound
of the shape of the start
of a kiss."

Closer to 3.75 stars but GR doesn't have a decimal point scale. Decent collection of poems. Duffy's poems have always been incredibly visceral and accessible, which is good for when you just wanna pick something up.

My favourites were 'Warming Her Pearls' (we love lesbian pining), 'Syntax, 'Twin', 'If I Was Dead', 'Mean Time', 'Leda' (yes an interpretation of that story with Zeus as a swan), 'Mrs. Lazarus' and 'Valentine'.

There's themes of infidelity, death, obsessive love and domestic love as well as few poems with literary references. Overall, it's an interesting but short collection.

[rina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will always love her poetry I thank wjec for putting her as an option on the curriculum, the only thing they know how to do right.

I recommend her poetry because I love it all, her dramatic monologues, imagery, language, she does it right :)

[Liquidwitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly scooped this up so I could have a copy of Warming Her Pearls and Anne Hathaway but found lots others I haven't read before that I liked too 🥰
"The heart thudding/ like a spade on buried bones" is a banger of a line.

[Seren · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*
My favourites were:
- Correspondents
- Adultery
- Delilah
- Anne Hathaway
- Hour
- Tea

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit of a poetry novice, but really enjoyed Steam, Text and If I Was Dead.

[Kristi Priestley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carol Ann Duffy is one of my favourite poets, so I enjoyed this collection of poems about "love", albeit love in all its forms and at every point in its journey.

[Francesca · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful🫶
favourite poems were:
-Adultery
-Mean time
-Delilah
-Anne Hathaway
-Text
-Syntax
-Leda

[Mimi Carstairs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this collection held several enjoyable poems for me, I must admit that the majority of Duffy's love poems assembled here fell shockingly short of my expectations, and desire when having picked it up. Many of them made me feel a little...uncomfortable, to be honest. I'm not sure what it was, exactly, and it truly hurts my heart to be writing this as Duffy has written one of my all-time favourite poetry collections (The Bees - see my review here), but there we go.
That being said, the ones I did like were wonderfully raw and vivid. I particularly enjoyed 'Words, Wide Night':

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine
the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you and this

is what it is like or what it is like in words.

and 'Anne Hathaway':

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where he would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next bed.

'Miles Away', 'Drunk', 'Delilah' and 'Mean Time' were others I enjoyed.

I find myself very lenient when it comes to judging these types of poems, as my perception of love is naturally in a constant state of flux, and thus will vary greatly depending on my present situation. Overall, a nice collection of poems, just not really what the 'me' at the time of reading was looking for!

[E · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been looking forward to reading Love Poems since I bought the collection four months ago, no doubt because of my high expectations from studying 'Hour' so intensely at secondary school. And mostly, it met my expectations.

Love Poems gets off to quite a weak start with the poems from Selling Manhattan failing to impress me at all, although my last foray into Duffy was with The World's Wife, so I'm not surprised my expectations weren't reached. It may just have been the fault of my own voice, but I found the poems awkwardly stilted but with a gem of a phrase of two jutting out from the page. As standalone poems these felt below par, but they drew parallels within the collection, like the letters from Correspondents to The Darling Letters (coincidentally this was the first poem in the collection that resonated with me). The interlinked meanings from the scene and the letter excerpts proved Duffy's literary prowess, and delivered you to the last two lines where you'd found you'd absorbed a whole narrative without being aware.

The Darling Letters sparked off a chain of poems that showcased Duffy's incredible wordplay and creative structures, all the more apparent with the subtle (or not so subtle) metalinguistics in poems such as 'Adultery' and the more obvious 'Syntax'.

One of the things that made this collection work so well (after the initial disappointment) was the constant edge of tension lurking beneath the works. There were some beautiful poems such as The Windows and Ann Hathaway, but The Windows held a note of bittersweet unattainability, and Ann Hathaway encapsulated grief and love almost tangibly. The tension is held throughout the collection with the continuous references to the 'darkening hour' and 'darkening sky' in a style reminiscent of William Blake, although temporarily defied with the revelation 'nothing dark will end our shining hour'...

The last poem, New Vows, serves to symbolically undo the entire collection, 'unhave, unlove...'

[Mara Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant! Duffy's poems are lush, rich, textured, emotive, accessible and so lovely. Vivid poetry on the topic of love with great insight -- from the early crush to adultery to heartbreak to distant longing. Some poems made me laugh, some made my heart pound with Duffy's perfect selection of metaphor.

Carol Ann Duffy was named Britain's Poet Laureate in 2009, the first woman, first Scot and first openly gay person to hold the position. Her words are literally perfect. She knows love and has such mastery of the poetic form that your heart sings. She's also current and easy to read.

Here's one poem that gives a taste of her lovely work:

To the Unknown Lover

Horrifying, the thought of you,
whoever you are,
future knife to my scar.
stay where you are.

Be handsome, beautiful, drop-dead
gorgeous, keep away.
Read my lips.
No way. OK?

The old heart of mine's
an empty purse.
These ears are closed.
Don't phone, want dinner,

make things worse.
Your little quirks?
Your wee endearing ways?
What makes you you, all that?

Stuff it, mount it, hang it
on the wall, sell tickets.
I won't come. Get back. Get lost.
Get real. Get a life. Keep schtum.

And just, you must, remember this --
there'll be no kiss, no clinch,
no smoochy dance, no true romance.
You are Anonymous. You're Who?

Here's not looking, kid, at you.

[Andy Stamp · Rating 3 out of 5]

My poetry choice for #readingrewards 2013 was Love Poems by Carol Ann Duffy.
After hearing and reading many positive reviews about the poet I thought I would try this short collection of love poems.
Containing over 30 poems, Duffy symbolises many high emotions when talking about love, betrayal, affairs, adultery, sex etc. and the majority are very imaginative, dramatic and bring you into the picture she is painting.
After a while however there is a familiarity seeping in with little alteration to the mood pattern and layout. I perhaps made the mistake of reading them all at once and so the diversity was non existent.
In terms of stand alone poems there are some intriguing depictions of love and is worth a read

[Connor Stompanato]

A lovely selection of poems all focused on the theme of love, unsurprisingly. I had read some of these before as in Scotland we study Carol Ann Duffy in high school, so it was nice to read them again as well as find new poems by her that I enjoyed. The poems that stood out to me the most:

• Warming Her Pearls - brought imagery of Mrs Danvers from 'Rebecca' to mind.
• Girlfriends - very sensual language.
• Valentine - read in school, quite memorable.
• Disgrace - thought provoking, angry, tough word choices.
• Delilah - I enjoy 'The World's Wife' poems that take famous figures stories as inspiration.
• Text - Poetry that uses modern technology is always interesting to me.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed that these were a collection of poems gathered from across her works and put together, rather than a collection she had written to be in the same book; they didn't have the same unity intentional collections can have, which is what I was expecting.

After reading I think a better name would have been "heartbreak poems" or "breakup poems". Some good writing -I thought To the Unknown Lover and The Darling Letters were both especially good as poetry - but they hurt my heart too much to say I liked this collection.

[Chelsea Duncan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily one of the best collections of poetry I've ever read - it's evocative, it's poignant, it's beautiful, it's hard hitting (in places), and it covers so many different aspects (positive and negative) about love. It is a keeper, one to grace the bookshelf for a good long while, would definitely recommend. So many of the lines and poems themselves remain with you long after reading them. Amazing book.

[Judy Croome · Rating 2 out of 5]

Literary poems about love that didn't quite resonate with me. Two poems really called to me: "If I was Dead" and "Correspondents." Perhaps on another day, in another time, I'd have felt more connection to Duffy's work.

[chad chrysanthemum · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this in a charity shop, just before Valentine's day. It appeared to be brand-new, the spine un-cracked, other than a pencilled note in the front that reads "Christmas, 2010". I love an object with a story, especially one that we can only guess at. It must've been bought soon after the book was published, possibly it was waited for, anticipated. Was the gift not appreciated? Was the book not read? How did it end up in a British Heart Foundation charity shop, on a shelf next to a pair of leather boots and a filligree'd teapot? But enough speculation, let's talk about the love that we do know about. I liked this little anthology, but it's not my favourite I've read of Duffy's poetry. Part of that is due to the fact that I probably need to re-read it a couple more times to let rhythms, meanings, emotion sink in. That said, there were some that did jump out at me, which makes it more disappointing that others didn't. I liked all the poems from The World's Wife, but that's no surprise as I already own that collection. Warming Her Pearls and Valentine are classics for a reason, and they stood out too. I liked most of the poems from The Other Country, but again that's a collection I like outright. All in all, I enjoyed the cohesive theme, I liked the different meditations on love, but I think love poetry is perhaps not where I think Duffy shines the most, so it was always not going to be my favourite. It's cute though, and I liked more than I disliked, or was indifferent to.

[Joel Duncan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was super unexpected.

I was gifted a whole bag of poetry books by a friend. I've never seen so many poetry collections in one place. I was just picking through them, getting a feel for the poets styles by reading the first poems.

Then I read the first poem in this collection and it was so good, I immediately re-read it to my wife and we discussed it for a good 10 minutes. It was morally complex, romantic but mysterious and even after the rest of the poems have been read, I still remember that one perfectly.

I'm sure I have forced myself through Carol Ann Duffy's poems in school, so the only rational explanation for this being so good is that my teachers didn't pick any exciting ones and instead ones that would take a lot of digging to understand, especially for teenage me. Which teenage me had no interest in doing.

I can see why Duffy is the poet laureate, she can tell a whole story in a line. She doesn't use elaborate metaphors (which I'm a sucker for using and liking) but creates an intimate space for your senses - the touch of lips on a telephone mouthpiece, the hammers of sun flung down, the soft hands holding a letter saying goodbye.

I don't keep a lot of poetry collections, but this one is staying on the shelf.

[Dr. des. Siobhán · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet collection of (queer) love poetry by Carol Ann Duffy. As always: Not all of the poems worked for me, but I liked how Duffy was able to capture longing, passion, love, and loss. The queer poems are the best ones I think, but Duffy has a way with words that usually works for me, while not being too mysterious or enigmatic.

"At Ballynahinch:

I lay by the river at Ballynahinch
and saw the light hurl down
like hammers flung by the sun
to light-stun me, batter
the water to pewter,
everything dream or myth,
my own death further upstream;
the sleeping breath now - by my side
in our wounded sprawl - or the one
who did not love me at all,
who had never loved me, no,
who would never love me, I knew,
down by the star-thrashed river at Ballynahinch,
at Ballynahinch, at Ballynahinch, at Ballynahinch." (53)

4 Stars