Love Poems [Hardcover]

'A lovely present for someone in your life for Valentine's Day.'
--Western Morning News

`She reminds us that poetry is our greatest national art and can also be the most accessible.' --Cathy Galvin, Sunday Times magazine

`An exhilarating harvest of 34 poems reveals Duffy as a poet who covers the stormy waterfront of desire, devotion and despair. From distant yearning to wild new passion through absence, boredom and infidelity, to break-ups, grief and solitude, she commands every conjugation in the `syntax of love'. Versatile, restless, moving as adroitly between verse-forms as she does between the stages of affection, and disaffection, Duffy shows us `what it is like in words'. As always, she manages the rare feat of building on traditions, forebears, allusions while stirring and shaking the emotions with muscular, unpretentious force.' --Boyd Tonkin, The Independent

`The selection reminds us of her uncommon gift for accessibility coupled with profound artistry... The book showcases Duffy's breathtaking control of language and imagery... Duffy writes with a compelling mixture of bravura and tenderness... Mysterious yet accessible; both truthful and beautiful; this selection is a paean to the power of love and of language's ability to capture it.' --The Sunday Telegraph

`[Duffy's] work has an earthy directness that is paradoxically flat yet engaging.' --The Daily Mail

`Is love poetry really hot? The best love poetry - and here I'm thinking of something like Carol Ann Duffy's `Warming Her Pearls' - distils the heat of passion in condensed, burning words... Buy Love Poems and test them out for yourself.'
--The Scotsman

`Both looks and reads like the ideal Valentine's book. Clad in a decadently textured burgundy and black hardback cover, this selection includes poems taken from eight of Duffy's previous books. Every aspect of love is tackled from the unrequited to the extremely requited, and all with Duffy's lyrical, often witty style that makes her one of the most accessible contemporary poets.' --Bath Life

`Thirty-four exhilarating poems reveal Duffy as a poet who covers the stormy waterfront of desire, devotion and despair.'
--Belfast Telegraph

`You couldn't ask for a better introduction to our current Poet Laureate than this dazzling collection. Duffy's vision of love isn't soppy but her direct and imaginative way of describing being in love couldn't be more honest.' --Glamour magazine

`A portable guide to the modern romantic lyric' --New Statesman

'Mysterious yet accessible; both truthful and beautiful; this selection is a paean to the power of love and of language's ability to capture it.'
--Sunday Telegraph

Whether writing of longing or adultery, seduction or simple homely acts of love, Carol Ann Duffy brings to her readers the truth of each experience. Her poetry speaks of tangled, heated passion; of erotic love; fierce and hungry love; unrequited love; and of the end of love. It recognizes too the way that love can make the everyday sacred. As with all her writing, these poems are alive to the sounds of modern life, but also attuned to – and rich with – the traditions of love poetry. Love Poems contains some of Carol Ann Duffy’s most popular poems. Always imaginative, heartfelt and direct, Duffy finds words for our experiences in love and out of love, and displays all the eloquence and skill that have made her one of the foremost poets of her time.