Poetry gets a bad rep. Folks moan about their terrible high school reading assignments in thin-papered books.
Sure, there is a lot of poetry that you wouldn’t want at your wedding. From cliché greeting card sentiments to hard to understand, badly translated poetry. But there is some great work out there that you can both enjoy and perhaps use to inspire aspects of your wedding and relationship.
First, I want to prove to you that poetry can be fun. I spent two years at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY studying for my MFA. It was the best two years of my life because it was a gift to have the time to write poetry and be surrounded by so many liked minded writers.
Reading at Busboys and Poets in DC
There, I met poet Jee Leong Koh. He is a more formal poet than I am, but he addresses some spicy themes and uses thoughtful humor in his poetry. Check out his blog: http://jeeleong.blogspot.com/
Poetry is meant to be read and heard, and sometimes performed, by real, live poets. You can hear poetry readings online at a lot of sites. Here are two great archives:
http://poets.org/page.php/prmID/361
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/audio.html
Poetry is a space for careful thought, consideration and exploration of an otherwise chaotic world. Sometimes questions are answered, sometimes they are simply posed. Poetry lives by being read and shared. I hope you’ll consider reading some.
Advice:
If you are interested in having more familiar poems at your wedding, check out these great sites:
Poets.org, from the Academy of American poets, has a list of famous poems about weddings:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5857
The Offbeat bride (who isn’t?), has a list of “Awesome wedding readings for bad-ass couples”:
http://offbeatbride.com/2008/07/wedding-readings#more-859
The Indiebride (which doesn’t seem to have new posts anymore), has some readings listed, too:
Other suggestions? Use the “Comments” section freely.
Wordarrangement's Blog 