Wendy Mulford

For centuries women have written about love with passion, humour, frustration and despair; but never before have their voices come together as in this exhilarating and timeless compendium. Here are love poems in all their true, subversive drama, delicately arranged according to a balance of moods and modes: of argument and lyric, joke and passionate utterance, rejection, rage and ecstacy. Poets, well-known and obscure, ancient and modern - from Sappho to Akhamotova,Patti Smith to Selima Hill, Sylvia Plath to Alice Walker - all challenge the traditional perception of women as muse and object of desire, and magnificently transcend it.

For over 2,000 years women have been writing love poetry. Here is the first anthology of love poems written only by women. Poets from all ages and all parts of the world, expressing love not only for their male and female lovers, but for parents, children, friends, for art, God, nature, and homeland, are collected here, and include the works of: Sappho, Emily Dickenson, Ono no Komachi, Shadab Vajdi, Alice Walker, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, and many more.