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 --jm

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.