Modern Love Poems

We all know the classic poets known for their poems of love. Of course there’s Neruda, Shakespeare, Browning, and Rumi, but what about more contemporary views? These six poets and their poems look at love in a more modern voice. The cadence may be different, but the depth of feeling remains. 

Stephen Dunn

Read his poem: The Kiss

Purchase his book: The Not Yet Fallen World

About the book: Stephen Dunn’s poems confront our contradictions with tenderness and wit, enliven the ordinary with penetrating observation, and alert us to the haunting wonders and relationships that surround us.

Kim Addonizio

Read her poem: My Heart

Purchase her book: Now We're Getting Somewhere

About the book: Combatting existential gloom with a wicked, seductive energy, Addonizio investigates desire, loss, and the madness of contemporary life. She calls out to Walt Whitman and John Keats, echoes Dorothy Parker, and finds sisterhood with Virginia Woolf.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Read her poem: San Antonio

Purchase her book: Everything Comes Next

About the book: This celebratory book collects in one volume award-winning and beloved poet Naomi Shihab Nye's most popular and accessible poems.

David Lehman

Read his poem: When a Woman Loves a Man

Purchase his book: The Morning Line

About the book: The Morning Line is David Lehman's most ambitious book to date, combining wit, quotidian charm, and off-the-cuff spontaneity of poems written with candid and moving meditations on life, love, aging, disease, friendship, chance, and the possibility of redemption in a godless age.

Amy Uyematsu

Read her poem: The Meaning of Zero: A Love Poem

Purchase her book: That Blue Trickster Time

About the book: While addressing serious social and political issues, Uyematsu's poems are deeply rooted in a reverence for nature and spiritual growth that comes with aging.

Nikki Giovanni Read her poem: Resignation

Purchase her book: Make Me Rain

About the book: One of America's most celebrated poets challenges us with this powerful and deeply personal collection of verse that speaks to the injustices of society while illuminating the depths of her own heart.