Love Poems

A landmark collection of love poetry by the most widely published African American poet of her time, tracing the arc of a queer relationship and including some of her most famous poems

Foreword by aja monet • Afterword by Adrienne Rich

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, with flaps and deckle-edged paper

With the publication in 1993 of Love Poems (published as Haruko / Love Poems), June Jordan became the first major Black poet to write a collection composed entirely of love poems. In the first half of the collection, Jordan wrestles with the heartbreak of her doomed relationship with a woman identified only by her first name, Haruko. In the second half, which brings together poems written over the course of twenty years, including some of her most famous, like “Poem About My Rights,” “Resolution #1,003,” “I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies,” and “Poem Number Two on Bell’s Theorem,” she explores various manifestations of love—as romance and political resistance, selfhood and motherhood, connection to and alienation from a beautiful and often cruel world. With this Penguin Classics edition, June Jordan takes her place in the American canon alongside her contemporaries Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Nikki Giovanni, and bell hooks.