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June 18, 2022

My Love

Bruce Nugent

My love has hair
Like midnight,
But midnight fades to dawn.
My love has eyes
Like starlight,
But starlight fades in morn.
My love has a voice
Like dew-fall,
But dew-fall dies at a breath.
My love has love
Like life’s all,
But life’s all fades in death.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on June 18, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“My Love” appeared in Palms IV no. 1 (October 1926).

Richard Bruce Nugent was a poet, playwright, short story writer, and painter during the Harlem Renaissance movement. One of the only openly gay writers from the Harlem Renaissance, his work was frequently published in magazines and anthologies such as Fire!!, Opportunity, and Alain Locke’s The New Negro (Atheneum, 1925). He died on May 27, 1987.

“Doubt and Love” by Libbie C. Baer
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“My True Love Hath My Heart and I Have His” by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
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Thanks to Jos Charles, author of feeld (Milkweed Editions, 2018), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read or listen to a Q&A about Charles’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.

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Poem-a-Day - "My Love" by Bruce Nugent

My Love

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