If you make a list of love poems, you’re obliged to include a Shakespearean sonnet, so I’ll start with a lesser known one, Sonnet 106. In the poem ... the affirming line “I love you.

In the poem, Dove, the former US poet laureate dismisses the clichéd ways in which we talk about the heart: break or harden. The poet cannot tell her lover from “the bottom of it / how I feel” but ...