The Vintage Book of Love Poetry

This anthology is shaped not by literary chronology but by the timeless human drama it records: its five ‘acts’ move from speculation and Coup De Foudre through the troubled endurings of love - its consummations, dangers, joys, perversions and abdications - to loneliness and memory. In addition, the poems are presented anonymously, so that Marvell’s coy lady rubs cold shoulders unexpectedly with Gershwin’s naughty baby; and complex psychological fictions are overthrown by squibs. John Fuller provides a provocative introduction to this uniquely expressive handbook of shared emotion.