One True Love

This collection of poems is for everyone who aspires to experience one true love. Love comes in many forms. New love is compelling, and often compulsive. Mature love is grounding and sustaining. In time, it becomes comforting and perhaps even transcendent. One True Love is a rare and beautiful expression of love for all life’s seasons that combines mutual commitment, affection, and attraction in a sustaining connection. For the first year after the realization of their love, Michael Watkins sent Katia Vlachos a poem every day they were apart as a way to stay connected. In all, they shared more than a hundred love poems. For this specially curated book, Vlachos and Watkins selected the 52 poems they loved best—one for each week of the year. The poems range from the classic—Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116—through the whimsical—William Carlos Williams’s poetic admission of plum theft—to the wistful—Rabindranath Tagore’s “Unending Love.” They are organized by the seasons and chronicle the evolution of love from the passion of spring, the lush growth of summer, and the maturity of fall to the prospect of loss and hope of transcendence in winter. Together, they reflect and inspire the experience of one true love.