Partly Cloudy: Poems of Love and Longing by Gary Soto

From the author of The Afterlife and Novio Boy, comes this small book of love poems written in the voices of teens.  The first half of Partly Cloudy is verse from a female perspective, including “Black Books,” about a young woman’s search for Mr. Not a Jerk, and “Obsession” which ends with the line, “Young lady, there’s a picture of a boy at the back of your retinas.”  In the second half, Soto explores young love from the male point of view.  In “Beautiful Trouble” a deacon’s son yearns for a red-lipped, bangle-clad bad girl.  “Driftwood” is a sad lament of rejection that makes poetry out of a frozen river.  The poetry is accessible and captures the vulnerability of eager young hearts, without conjuring up fiery passion or utter heartbreak.  Partly Cloudy is a good introduction to poetry for younger teens and tweens and well-suited to instructional use. --Regan Schwartz

Soto, Gary. Partly Cloudy: Poems of Love and Longing. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. Print.

Falling Hard: 100 Love Poems by Teens Edited by Betsy Franco

One of the most frequent requests I’ve received over the years (well, probably second to demands for urban/street/realistic fiction) is for love poems, and so I was thrilled when this anthology came out in paperback last year. Falling Hard: 100 Love Poems by Teens, Betsy Franco’s compilation, finally gives students what they want. Franco collected these poems from around the world as teens sent her their submissions via email. Diversity is ample, but the poetry stays true to the title with a focus on love, albeit love in its many forms. Whet students’ appetite with short poems like “Love is Like”: “the sweetness of honey/ falling from a bee hive./ You have to be careful/ not to get stung.” A great follow up to the teen who has just finished Tupac’s The Rose that Grew From Concrete or the reader who is busy composing notes to loved ones and searching for a poem to add to an epistle. Sophisticated readers may enjoy pairing it with Plato’s Symposium or Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Franco, Betsy, Ed. Falling Hard: 100 Love Poems by Teens. Somerville: Candlewick Press, 2010.