As a title, “Love After Love” could be considered both helpful and frustrating. It’s helpful to know that this poem has something to do with love, but the title raises as many questions as it answers.
To begin with, the word “love” has a million different meanings (well, maybe not a million, but you know, a whole bunch). There’s romantic love, and familial love, and love between friends, and love of country, and love of chocolate… you get the idea. So which kind of love does this poem address?
Plus, the title repeats the word “love” and embeds it in a frustratingly ambiguous phrase. The word “after” suggests a sequence of events, but we don’t even know whether the first reference to love has the same meaning as the second. If “love” has the same meaning in both instances, then the phrase “love after love,” like the phrase “time after time,” could imply monotonous repetition.
When you finish reading the poem, you might conclude that the title refers to self-love. But in the third stanza, there’s that puzzling reference to “another”—perhaps a former lover who penned the “love letters” now stored on the bookshelf?
If that is the case, then the title could refer to two different kinds of love, two different experiences of love, one “after” the other. What do you think: does this interpretation imply possible growth or development, as opposed to simple repetition? Or are we way over-thinking this whole title thing?