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Poetry on Marriage
The rush and blush of a new love often kickstarts the poetic impulse, but it’s so easy to fall into cliché (at least for me) in one of those I-just-fell-in-love poems.
On the other hand, long-term relationships of any type develop complexity as time passes. That complexity creates a depth and richness that can defy cliché, even when writing of a romantic love relationship.
The Academy of American Poets website has an entire section devoted to poems about marriage and partnership, containing dozens of fine poems. Not all of them are happily-ever-after, but as I’ve heard, marriage is not for the faint of heart.
My second husband and I will, if all goes well, celebrate out tenth anniversary of marriage next month. I am his fourth wife, so between the two of us, we have a good bit of experience! One of the things I love best about him is that he never tries to censor me — a good habit for someone in a marriage or partnership with a writer.
The poem below was originally published in 2017 in Passager, a journal founded in 1990 in Baltimore, Maryland. Passager only publishes work by writers who are at least 50 years old. They put out beautiful issues, and one of the best things for me about turning fifty was that I could finally submit poems to them.
