How do I love thee in the aughts and beyond

August 17, 2021 10:17 AM

Can you recommend any contemporary love poems or poetry collections? Would be great if they are living poets, but also okay if not.

I am drawn to the tone of Frank O'Hara and Stephen Dunn, also Richard Brautigan and Richard Siken. Also Jack Gilbert and Li-Young Lee, Wendy Cope, Mary Oliver, Lucille Clifton, Linda Gregg. Kaveh Akbar, Ocean Vuong, Warsan Shire, Ada Limon, Maggie Smith.

I would really like to read more works by women and queer poets, as well as poets of colour.

I love when the ordinary life is being talked about, or when the poem doesn't make you think it's a love poem in the beginning. Interested to read how other poets write about the erotic, of the body, being a woman, being human. Or perhaps distances/geography. Or identity. Kink also okay or self-love.

Thanks in advance, hive mind!

posted by pleasebekind to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

This may be too obvious since she's pretty popular, but I love Rupi Kaur's poetry!
posted by carlypennylane at 10:52 AM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

Here are some contemporary women of color poets who have written about love and/or ordinary life. Many of them are queer, also:
Donika Kelly, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Aracelis Girmay, Safia Elhillo, Eve L. Ewing, Elizabeth Acevedo, Morgan Parker, Fatimah Asghar, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Angel Nafis, Naomi Shihab Nye, Brenda Shaughnessy, Joy Harjo, Meena Alexander.
posted by wicked_sassy at 11:07 AM on August 17, 2021

I would really like to read more works by women and queer poets, as well as poets of colour.

I love when the ordinary life is being talked about, or when the poem doesn't make you think it's a love poem in the beginning. Interested to read how other poets write about the erotic, of the body, being a woman, being human. Or perhaps distances/geography. Or identity.

This part of your Ask made me want to share Dear Straight People by Denice Frohman with you.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 2:35 PM on August 17, 2021

Oh you are gonna love Hera Lindsay Bird. (I recommend "Monica" and "Pyramid Scheme" for starters.)
posted by babelfish at 2:45 PM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

Bleuets by Maggie Nelson is exactly what you are looking for.

If heartbreak is also on the list, then "The Glass Essay" in Glass, Irony, God by Anne Carson is one of my favourite poems. Oh, and also The Beauty of the Husband, again by Anne Carson, which covers similar ground.

This Imagined Permanence, by Nathalie Stephens/Nathanaël, is also exactly what you are looking for and sadly very out of print, but if you should somehow happen across it, it is breathtaking.
posted by spindle at 1:16 PM on August 20, 2021

I'd suggest Cristina Peri Rossi, though she writes in Spanish and I haven't found many translations.
posted by kelper at 3:32 PM on November 6, 2021

I like Carol Ann Duffy, who is a queer woman (though not of colour).
posted by snakeling at 12:13 PM on December 16, 2021