Written in the Shakespearean tradition, this collection of sonnets describes the story of unobtainable love.

“Since love from you can set my loving free,/ Let’s trust I’ll be the friend you are to me.”

The “narrator” seeks the attentions of someone who has always garnered his* affections, but she is married to another man and won’t entertain his desires. He struggles to contain himself whenever he is in her presence, a struggle that proves so intense as to be overwhelming at times.

“Perhaps someday we’ll feel our souls combine/ If ever you share parted lips with mine.”

There are so many wonderfully worded lines in these poems, I found myself highlighting something in each sonnet, especially when he compares himself to cloth: “But I say wrap those sweet imagined parts/ With me the cloth that drapes your curving path…”

Anyone who has ever experienced love will understand the feelings expressed openly in these poems.

5 Stars

*I use the male gender for simplification, but I sense that the narrator of the poems could be either male or female. Specification as male is rare throughout the works and would be easily interchangeable.