"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" ~Shakespeare*

February is the perfect month to purchase love poetry. And I love poetry, so that suits me fine. So, this morning, I took a moment to see what is currently available and suited to the cause here at the book store.

You need not spend a lot of cash to satisfy your sweet tooth when Dover Thrift Editions are available. Great Love Poems edited by Shane Weller is only $2 before tax and in this small but lovely volume resides poetry by Shakespeare*, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and William Blake to name a few.

Then look no further than our bargain tables to find a lovely hardback volume of poetry by Pablo Neruda (in English and Spanish verse, now shelved in the poetry section.) Intimacies: Poems of Love is available for a mere $8.98 prior to taxation, when otherwise we'd sell it for close to thirty dollars.

Quite the right price, eh? And then open up the volume and you will see the lovely paintings of Mary Heebner that accompany Mr. N's words:

"Verses of pastry that melt

into milk and sugar in the mouth,

air and water to drink,

the bites and kisses of love.

I long for eatable sonnets,

poems of flour and honey."

Gosh, that makes me hungry. And if you want to be even more romantic, then recite Mr. Neruda's poems in Espanol:

"Versos de hojaldre que derritan

leche y azucar en la boca,

el aire y el agua se beben,

el amor se muerde y se besa,

quiero sonetos comestibles,

poemas de miel y de harina."

And then you can't go wrong to purchase a bit of heaven in verse, The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, is one of my favorite books.

Not all the verse is dedicated to love per se, but much of it appears to be. Rumi was expressing his love of the divine, of God, but there's no reason the verse can't suit one's worldly lover:

"When the ocean comes to you as a lover,

marry at once, quickly,

for God's sake!

Don't postpone it!

Existence has no better gift.

No amount of searching

will find this.

A perfect falcon, for no reason

has landed on your shoulder,

and become yours."

See what I mean?!

And then if you want to add a bit of spice try The Best American Erotic Poems, edited by David Lehman.

Charles Simic writes, "I love breasts, hard full breasts, guarded by a button," to which Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote, "I, too, beneath your moon, almighty Sex, go forth at nightfall crying like a cat." M-E-O-W! That sounds about right ... so why not open up to a melange of erotic spices found within these pages.

But then perhaps you are like me and you love to find books on your own? If so, you know where to find us.

Jan
Book Seller