Breaking Up Summary

Katherine Garrison Chapin reveals a darker, harsher side to love in "Lilacs," when she describes receiving pretty lilacs from her lover but is unable to tell him that, "It is the lilacs I love, not you." 1950s wit Dorothy Parker warns young women that if they are quaking and shaking, and if their partner vows eternal love, they must make a note because "one of you is lying." In "The Philosopher," Edna St. Vincent Millay asks herself why she should cry and lose sleep over her man, when she knows many kinder men and wonders why he is the one man on her mind. She then asks herself why she thinks she should "love so wisely and so well."

Roger McGough captures the mutability and tenuousness of romantic love in "Summer with Monika," in which he tells his lover that he...