The poet Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote, “‘Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” With the theme of lost love in mind, Robert Pinsky, the 39th U.
S. Poet Laureate, has collected 101 poems in The Handbook of Heartbreak . The slim volume includes works by a diverse range of poets from Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath to Emily Dickinson. All the poems beautifully depict the exquisite misery heartbreak brings. Pinsky chose each poem specifically because “. . . it sounded lonely to me.” The fascination with love-lorn lamentations are well-represented here.
