Matthew Yeager is an American Modern poet, who is the author of “Like That”.  Yeager said “I wrote this about a year after Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s career home-run record. An idea for a Hank Aaron simile began the poem; it led to the memory of some fine feelings.” Poem to First Love is filled with emotional moments between two people and their love for one another. In addition, he gives insight on their age and their “I love you”s, specifically hers and the things he wished she would have felt/expressed. 

To have been told “I love you” by you could well be, for me,
the highlight of my life, the best feeling, the best peak
on my feeling graph, in the way that the Chrysler building
might not be the tallest building in the NY sky but is
the best, the most exquisitely spired, or the way that
Hank Aaron’s career home-run total is not the highest
but the best, the one that signifies the purest greatness. 
So improbable!  To have met you at all and then
to have been told in your soft young voice so soon
after meeting you: “I love you.”  And I felt the mystery
of being that you, of being a you and being
loved, and what I was, instantly, was someone
who could be told “I love you” by someone like you. 
I was, in that moment, new; you were 19; I was 22;
you were impulsive; I was there in front of you, with a future
that hadn’t yet been burned for fuel; I had energy;
you had beauty; and your eyes were a pale blue,
and they backed what you said with all they hadn’t seen,
and they were the least ambitious eyes I’d known,
the least calculating, and when you spoke and when
they shone, perhaps you saw the feeling you caused.
Perhaps you saw too that the feeling would stay.

Daniel Gerard Hoffman was an American poet, essayist, and academic. He was appointed the twenty-second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1973. I am yours as the summer air at evening is”, and his last two lines being “Your love is the weather of my being. What is an island without the sea?” He uses Summer and the weather as a simile for this love and he goes on to admit that what would he be without this love.  This short poem uses words like blossoms and bleakness, which are words frequently used to describe things in nature, but uses them to describe love. 

I am yours as the summer air at evening is
Possessed by the scent of linden blossoms,

As the snowcap gleams with light
Lent it by the brimming moon.

Without you I’d be an unleafed tree
Blasted in a bleakness with no Spring.

Your love is the weather of my being.
What is an island without the sea?

Kevin Varrone is an American author and poet, he is the author of: G-Point Almanac: Passyunk Lost (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010). He is a cofounder of Kevin Varrone is an American author and poet, he is the author of: G-Point Almanac: Passyunk Lost (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010). He is a cofounder of Beautiful Swimmer Press and teaches literature and writing at Temple University. “Poem I Wrote Sitting Across the Table From You,” is a poem of love and the thoughts he is thinking in the moment he writes this. He begins this poem talking about two nickels then ends the poem by talking about holding this person’s hand. These thoughts seem random and jumbled however are a great expression of his love for this person even if he does not directly state it or use the word love.

if I had two nickels to rub together
I would rub them together

like a kid rubs sticks together
until friction made combustion

and they burned
a hole in my pocket

into which I would put my hand
and then my arm

and eventually my whole self––
I would fold myself

into the hole in my pocket and disappear
into the pocket of myself, or at least my pants

but before I did
like some ancient star

I’d grab your hand

Joy Harjo is a poet, musician, and author. She is also the first Native American United States Poet Laureate. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late twentieth century. “For Keeps” is about love and it being for keeps, she expresses love through portraying a scene using time and nature. The line “I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.” This line shows love because she is feeling something for this person that she is with and wants to see where it takes her, and she does this without having to use the word love. 

Sun makes the day new.
Tiny green plants emerge from earth.
Birds are singing the sky into place.
There is nowhere else I want to be but here.
I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.
We gallop into a warm, southern wind.
I link my legs to yours and we ride together,
Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives.
Where have you been? they ask.
And what has taken you so long?
That night after eating, singing, and dancing
We lay together under the stars.
We know ourselves to be part of mystery.
It is unspeakable.
It is everlasting.
It is for keeps.

                              MARCH 4, 2013, CHAMPAIGN, ILLINOIS

Ella Wheeler Wilcox is an American poet, his poetry was very popular, generally written in plain, rhyming verse. The poem “I Love You”, shows the love she feels and the reasons why she feels this way, mostly due to physical reasons. The last two lines sum up the poem and what she is trying to show the reader “ And we’ll live our whole young lives away, In the joys of a living love.” She views love as a happy thing and all the feelings that come with it as a positive thing, which can be seen in the tone of the poem overall.

I love your lips when they’re wet with wine 
And red with a wild desire; 
I love your eyes when the lovelight lies 
Lit with a passionate fire. 
I love your arms when the warm white flesh 
Touches mine in a fond embrace; 
I love your hair when the strands enmesh 
Your kisses against my face. 

Not for me the cold, calm kiss 
Of a virgin’s bloodless love; 
Not for me the saint’s white bliss, 
Nor the heart of a spotless dove. 
But give me the love that so freely gives 
And laughs at the whole world’s blame, 
With your body so young and warm in my arms, 
It sets my poor heart aflame. 

So kiss me sweet with your warm wet mouth, 
Still fragrant with ruby wine, 
And say with a fervor born of the South 
That your body and soul are mine. 
Clasp me close in your warm young arms, 
While the pale stars shine above, 
And we’ll live our whole young lives away 
In the joys of a living love. 

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, inventor, teacher, and environmental activist. She is known for her feminist and activist writings. “Variations On The Word Love” explores the meaning of the word love. It is split into two contrasting stanzas, each one having a different take on how love manifests in the world of human emotion. This fits into the theme of love not only because she uses the word love, but she gives insight into what love means to her and helps the reader understand the variations of love and two views of it.

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It’s the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn’t what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there’s the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It’s not love we don’t wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It’s a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go. 

E. E. Cummings was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright; he wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays, and several essays.  He is know for his intentional misspellings and unconventional style. “I Carry Your Heart With Me” was first published in 1953, and shows the true nature of love. He goes on in this poem to explain how he carries this person’s love with him. He uses nature like stars and the sun to express how he carries this love and how the world is affected by it.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                                      i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime. Among all female poets of the English-speaking world in the 19th century, none was held in higher critical esteem or was more admired for the independence and courage of her views. In this sonnet she continually uses the line “I love thee”, to answer the question proposed in the the first line of the poem “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”  This fits in with the theme of love as she not only uses the word love but she explains the way she loves this person of which she is making references towards.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s greatest dramatist. He is also known for his sonnets, Sonnet 116 attempts to define love, by telling both what it is and is not. In the first stanza, Shakespeare says that love is: ”the marriage of true minds”—is perfect and unchanging, it does not “admit impediments,” and it does not change when it find changes in the loved one. This represents the theme of love as he is trying to explain what love is and what it is not. 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
Admit impediments. Love is not love 
Which alters when it alteration finds, 
Or bends with the remover to remove. 
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark 
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 
It is the star to every wand’ring bark, 
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. 
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle’s compass come; 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 
If this be error and upon me prov’d, 
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.