Poems of Love

“Poet L.L. Barkat is blessed with a talent for metaphor, an eye for the spare image that can shimmer like a polished gem, and a sensuous and lyrical voice — gifts she uses beautifully, even profoundly, in Love, Etc.”

—Maureen Doallas, author of Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems

Here’s a blush rose,
with raspberry scent.

Here’s a pink,
come taste the edge.

And here, my dear,
upon the stair,
is simply the hip
of a white-blue rose
I’ve carried up
to bed.

—L.L. Barkat

Featured on the BBC!

From the “Etc.” section of the collection, “Vermillion” was featured on the BBC, alongside Ray Bradbury, Sylvia Plath, Vivaldi, Sting, William Carlos Williams, and more.

Words About Love, Etc.

“Though subtitled poems of love, laughter, longing & loss, L.L. Barkat’s new collection, Love, Etc., is all longing to me—reaching repeatedly for the clarity that surely lies within life’s entanglements. These poems flirt and seduce. Wait patiently for mulberries and ghosts at the window. Make nests. Button and unbutton. Press the edge of the self. They imitate breath and the spaces between, the desires that get caught in the throat when only a picture, a word, a letter, or silence will do.”

—Tania Runyan, NEA Fellow and author of How to Read a Poem: Based on the Billy Collins Poem “Introduction to Poetry” and Second Sky

“Delicate, suggestive, clever.”

—Carl Sharpe, editor of VerseWrights