Love Speaks Its Name Gay and Lesbian Love Poems

From Sappho to Shakespeare to Cole Portera marvelous and wide-ranging collection of classic gay and lesbian love poetry. The poets represented here include Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, Gertrude Stein, Federico Garcia Lorca, Djuna Barnes, Constantine Cavafy, Elizabeth Bishop, W. H. Auden, and James Merrill. Their poems of love are among the most perceptive, the most passionate, the wittiest, and the most moving we have. From Michelangelo's "Love Misinterpreted" to Noel Coward's "Mad About the Boy," from May Swenson's "Symmetrical Companion" to Muriel Rukeyser's "Looking at Each Other," these poems take on both desire and its higher power: love in all its tender or taunting variety.

J. D. McClatchy is the author of four books of poetry, two books of literary essays, and four opera libretti. He is editor of <i>The Yale Review</i> and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.<br>