She walks in beauty / George Gordon, Lord Byron -- Introduction -- Falling In Love -- Very Valentine / Gertrude Stein -- Song / John Keats -- I do not love thee / Honorable Caroline Norton -- From Hero and leander / Christopher Marlowe -- Love's philosophy / Percy Bysshe Shelley -- Having a coke with you / Frank O'Hara -- Symptom recital / Dorothy Parker -- To Aphrodite of the flowers, at Knossos / Sappho -- Come to the orchard in spring / Rumi -- Little clown, my heart / Sandra Cisneros -- Making Love -- Don't try to rush things-from Poem 41 / Antonio Machado -- From From June to December / Wendy Cope -- Wild nights-wild nights! / Emily Dickinson -- May I feel said he / E E Cummings -- When he pressed his lips / Steve Kowit -- Corinna's going a-Maying / Robert Herrick -- Weather-cock points south / Amy Lowell -- To his mistress going to bed / John Donne -- Song of Solomon 21:1-17, 3:1-5 -- Final soliloquy of the interior paramour / Wallace Stevens -- Variation on the word sleep / Margaret Atwood -- After making love we hear footsteps / Galway Kinnell -- It is marvellous / Elizabeth Bishop -- White heliotrope / Arthur Symons -- Youth / Osip Mandelstam, translated by W S Merwin -- Breaking Up -- Lilacs / Katherine Garrison Chapin -- Unfortunate coincidence / Dorothy Parker -- Philosopher / Edna St Vincent Millay -- From Summer with Monika / Roger McGough -- I'm going to Georgia / Folk song -- Type of loss / Ingeborg Bachmann -- On monsieur's departure / Queen Elizabeth I -- Eaten heart-from The Knight of Curtesy -- My life closed twice before its close / Emily Dickinson -- When we two parted / George Gordon, Lord Byron -- Well, I have lost you / Edna St Vincent Millay -- What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (sonnet XLIII) / Edna St Vincent Millay -- No, thank you, John / Christina Rossetti -- When you have forgotten Sunday: the love story / Gwendolyn Brooks -- End / Elizabeth Alexander -- Marriage -- Passionate shepherd to his love / Christopher Marlowe -- Marriage / Gregory Corso -- From The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia / Sir Philip Sidney -- i carry your heart with me (i carry it in / E E Cummings -- To my dear and loving husband / Anne Bradstreet -- To Margo / Gavin Ewart -- Word to husbands / Ogden Nash -- To the ladies / Lady Mary Chudleigh -- Female of the species / Rudyard Kipling -- From Paradise Lost / John Milton -- Good wife / Proverbs 31:10-31 -- My last duchess / Robert Browning -- To speak of woe that is in marriage / Robert Lowell -- From a survivor / Adrienne Rich -- Letter from my wife / Nazim Hikmet --

To Paula in late spring / W S Merwin -- Farmer's calendar / Vietnamese folk poem -- Love Itself -- Birthday / Christina Rossetti -- June Light / Richard Wilbur -- Protocols / Vikram Seth -- Jamesian / Thom Gunn -- From Proverbs and Song Verse / Antonio Machado -- Sonnet XLIII: How do I love thee? / Elizabeth Barrett Browning -- XLIV: you must know that I do not love and that I love you / Pablo Neruda -- Code poem for the French resistance / Leo Marks -- Smaller orchid / Amy Clampitt -- Sonnet 116 / William Shakespeare -- Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing / Rumi -- Emperor / Matthew Rohrer -- Late fragment / Raymond Carver -- From The First Morning of the Second World / Delmore Schwartz -- 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 -- Work -- Weaponed woman / Gwendolyn Brooks -- Night waitress / Lynda Hull -- In an iridescent time / Ruth Stone -- Madam and her madam / Langston Hughes -- Letters from storyville / Natasha Trethewey -- Lineage / Margaret Walker -- I want you women up north to know / Tillie Olsen -- PS education / Ellen Hagan -- At the cafe / Patricia Kirkpatrick -- Worked late on a Tuesday night / Deborah Garrison -- Age of great vocations / Alane Rollings -- Defining worlds / G Y Baxter -- What's that smell in the kitchen? / Marge Piercy -- Father Grumble / Folk song -- Epitaph / Anonymous -- Beauty, Clothes, And Things Of This World -- Antony and Cleopatra, II, ii, 191-232 / William Shakespeare -- What do women want? / Kim Addonizio -- Catch / Richard Wilbur -- Cosmetics do no good / Steve Kowit -- Face lift / Sylvia Plath -- Fatigue / Hilaire Belloc -- Great lover / Rupert Brooke -- Patterns / Amy Lowell -- Crocheted bag / Rosemary Catacalos -- Delight in disorder / Robert Herrick -- Rhodora / Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Roses only / Marianne Moore -- Eagle poem / Joy Harjo -- Motherhood -- Cradle song / W B Yeats -- Notes from the delivery room / Linda Pastan -- Socks / Sharon Olds -- High school senior / Sharon Olds -- Nobody knows but mother / Mary Morrison -- From "Clearances," in memoriam MKH (1911-1984) / Seamus Heaney -- Woman's work / Julia Alvarez -- If there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) have / E E Cummings -- Somebody's mother / Mary Dow Brine -- Book of Ruth 1:16-17 -- Dream that I told my mother-in-law / Elizabeth Alexander -- Mother's closet / Maxine Scates -- Ode / Elizabeth Alexander -- Vietnam / Wislawa Szymborska -- Child / Mary Lamb -- Blessing the boats / Lucille Clifton --

Silence And Solitude

I'm happiest when most away / Emily Bronte

Keeping things whole / Mark Strand

We all know it / Marianne Moore

As much as you can / Constantine P Cavafy

Heart of a woman / Georgia Douglas Johnson

Sense of something coming / Rainer Maria Rilke

Death, etc / Maxine Kumin

From when one has lived a long time alone / Galway Kinnell

Zazen on ching-t'ing mountain / Li Po

Poems of our climate / Wallace Stevens

Growing Up And Growing Old

You begin / Margaret Atwood

Grown-up / Edna St Vincent Millay

Puberty-with capital letters / Ellen Hagan

Bra shopping / Parneshia Jones

Hairwashing / Julia Alvarez

Summer day / Mary Oliver

Living / Denise Levertov

I stepped from plank to plank / Emily Dickinson

To my last period / Lucille Clifton

Lumpectomy eve / Lucille Clifton

Older, younger, both / Joyce Sutphen

Survivor / Roger McGough

You can't have it all / Barbara Ras

Sign / Marge Piercy

Greatest love / Anna Swir

Time / Mary Ursula Bethell

Going blind / Rainer Maria Rilke

Old woman / Elizabeth Jennings

Let it be forgotten / Sara Teasdale

Courage / Anne Sexton

Death And Grief

We know this much / Sappho

Bustle in a house / Emily Dickinson

Never more will the wind / H D

Grief / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Widow's lament in springtime / William Carlos Williams

Companion / Jo McDougall

Remember / Christina Rossetti

From to W P / George Santayana

To death / Oliver St John Gogarty

That it is a road / Ariwara no narihara

From In memoriam A H H / Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Reconciliation / Walt Whitman

Friendship

Poem of friendship / Nikki Giovanni

Letter to N Y / Elizabeth Bishop

On gifts for grace / Bernadette Mayer

Love / Roy Croft

To Hayley / William Blake

Poison tree / William Blake

August / Louise Gluck

Summer at the beach / Louise Gluck

Girlfriends / Ellen Dore Watson

Woman friend / Julia Alzarez

My friends's divorce / Naomi Shihab Nye

Chocolate / Rita Dove

Magnificat / Michele Roberts

Secret lives / Barbara Ras

To flush, my dog / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How To Live

May 2 / David Lehman

From a letter to his daughter / Ralph Waldo Emerson

To be of use / Marge Piercy

Leap before you look / W H Auden

Try to praise the mutilated world / Adam Zagajewski

Leisure / W H Davies

Waking / Theodore Roethke

September, 1918 / Amy Lowell

6 AM thoughts / Dick Davis

Minor bird / Robert Frost

May today there be peace within / St Teresa of Avila

Bacchae chorus / Euripides

Dawn / W B Yeats

Don't quit / Unknown

All things pass / Lao-Tzu

Simple gifts / Anonymous (Shaker hymn)

24th September 1945 / Nazim Hikmet

Journey / Mary Oliver

Ithaka / Constantine P Cavafy

Colder the air / Elizabeth Bishop

Acknowledgments

Credits.

Falling in love

Making love

Breaking up

Marriage

Love itself

Work

Beauty, clothes, and things of this world

Motherhood

Silence and solitude

Growing up and growing old

Death and grief

Friendship

How to live.