In this week’s episode of Beyond the Verse, the official podcast of PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+, Maiya and Joe celebrate Valentine’s Day with a sweeping journey through love poetry across more than two thousand years.
Beginning with Sappho’s ‘Hymn to Aphrodite,’ Joe traces the devotional roots of romantic verse, where love is bound up with gods, ritual, and longing. From there, the hosts move through Robert Burns’s ‘A Red, Red Rose,’ exploring how symbols like the red rose and vows that last “till the seas gang dry” helped shape the language of romance we still use today.
Emily Dickinson’s ‘Why Do I Love You, Sir?’ introduces a quieter, more instinctive love, rooted in nature and inevitability rather than spectacle. W. B. Yeats’s ‘When You Are Old’ follows, shifting the focus from youthful beauty to spiritual connection and the endurance of feeling beyond time. Maiya and Joe reflect on how Yeats reimagines devotion, asking what remains when appearance fades.
The conversation then turns to Pablo Neruda, whose ‘Sonnet 17’ rejects traditional romantic clichés in favor of intimacy and shadow, while ‘Sonnet 11’ burns with hunger and urgency. Federico García Lorca’s ‘Gacela of Unforeseen Love’ brings a darker intensity, confronting desire, repression, and the pain of love that cannot be freely lived. Finally, John Cooper Clarke’s ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ offers a playful, modern twist, turning domestic objects into declarations of devotion and reminding listeners that love can live in everyday acts.
Maiya and Joe close by reflecting on what unites these poems. Across centuries, styles, and cultures, love poetry remains a form of devotion—sometimes sacred, sometimes comic, sometimes aching, but always human.
Featured Poets PDFs:
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