Wedding Poem

“Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” by Ross Gay (2015)

Winner of the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and a finalist for the Balcones Poetry Prize, this collection considers death, loss, and sustenance through the lens of the garden and the orchard. “Wedding Poem” appears in this collection.

“Sorrow Is Not My Name” by Ross Gay (2011)

From Gay’s collection, Bringing the Shovel Down, this poem’s speaker employs close observation of a vulture and lists of “naturally occurring sweet things” (Line 13) to insist on the right to his own happiness.

“To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian” by Ross Gay (2013)

In this poem, the speaker narrates the experience of collecting ripe figs from a tree on a city street in Philadelphia. In the course of the poem, a crowd joins the speaker in gathering and eating the figs, creating a kind of spontaneous block party.

“On Marriage” by Kahlil Gibran (1923)

A classic example of the epithalamion form, this poem advises betrothed couples to love, care for, and enjoy one another without abandoning their own individuality.

“Now” by Robert Browning

Robert Browning’s sonnet calls for lovers to forget about the past and the future, and embrace the “moment eternal” (Line 12) in which love is suspended at the apex of ecstasy.

“Epithalamion” by Rickey Laurentiis (2015)

Laurentiis wrote this poem to celebrate the marriage of her friends, the poets and writers Nicole Sealey and John Murillo. In the poem, the speaker suggests that a loving and generous marriage has the capacity to create a bond stronger than the self.