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  • Published: 24 March 2026
  • ISBN: 9781644215104
  • Imprint: Seven Stories Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 64
  • RRP: $24.99

Love Poems of Alan Dugan

  • Alan Dugan



Unique, inimitable expressions of romantic love from a the National Book Award-winning poet, the great Irish American bard.

Unique, inimitable expressions of romantic love from the National Book Award-winning poet, the great Irish American bard.

The love poems of the Great American poet Alan Dugan rival those by Catullus and Neruda for their insight and wit that have offered solace and entertained readers for decades and beyond.

Caustic, lustful and dark, these are yet beautiful expressions of the lionhearted Irish American poet, the core of his art, blending hurt and hardship with a powerful belief in the driving force that love is.

From “Love Song: I and Thou,” in Poems (1961):

                  I can nail my left palm
                                    To the left-hand crosspiece but
                  I can’t do everything myself:
                                    I need a hand to nail the right,
                  A help, a love, a you, a wife.

And from “Night Scene before Combat” in Poems Six (1989):

                                    … I should get back
                  to the truck I I left idling
                  by the curb, but I turn to you
                  for one last time in sleep, love,
                  before I put my uniform back on,
                  check my piece, and say So Long.

  • Published: 24 March 2026
  • ISBN: 9781644215104
  • Imprint: Seven Stories Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 64
  • RRP: $24.99

Praise for Love Poems of Alan Dugan

Praise for Poems Seven:
“The teller of these awkward truths has a role that could be called sacred … Dugan's remarkable achievement is to see into mean or mundane materials with all the profundity and force of poetry.” –Robert Pinsky, The New York Times Book Review
“[These poems'] magic derives from Dugan's ability to foreground the small, immediate detail, while lifting our eyes to something just beyond it.” The New Yorker
“Eloquent or blunt, sometimes baffling, funny or bitter, philosophical or curiously observant, [Dugan's poems] probe every part of life.” Boston Globe
“Deeply American in his manners, [Dugan] is the American other Americans are uneasy with. ... What separates him from, and elevates him above, other sly saboteurs and bitter enemies of posturing is the depth of his intelligence.” –Louise Glück, Threepenny Review
“[Dugan's] poems are spare, quirky, fierce, unconcessive, grudging, loving, and terribly real.” –Stanley Kunitz
“What you're holding in your hands is a monument, the lifetime trace of a mind wrangling with experience, setting down the truth in no uncertain terms. Dugan's a master.” –Louise Bogan

Praise for Poems Seven:
“The teller of these awkward truths has a role that could be called sacred … Dugan's remarkable achievement is to see into mean or mundane materials with all the profundity and force of poetry.” –Robert Pinsky, The New York Times Book Review
“[These poems'] magic derives from Dugan's ability to foreground the small, immediate detail, while lifting our eyes to something just beyond it.” The New Yorker
“Eloquent or blunt, sometimes baffling, funny or bitter, philosophical or curiously observant, [Dugan's poems] probe every part of life.” Boston Globe
“Deeply American in his manners, [Dugan] is the American other Americans are uneasy with. ... What separates him from, and elevates him above, other sly saboteurs and bitter enemies of posturing is the depth of his intelligence.” –Louise Glück, Threepenny Review
“[Dugan's] poems are spare, quirky, fierce, unconcessive, grudging, loving, and terribly real.” –Stanley Kunitz
“What you're holding in your hands is a monument, the lifetime trace of a mind wrangling with experience, setting down the truth in no uncertain terms. Dugan's a master.” –Louise Bogan