Question for Poetry Readers

I am looking for new poems.  I've been invited to read something at a friend's wedding, and I'd like to pick something funny and poignant, loving without being sappy.  Any suggestions? 

(Also, looking for excuses to expand my poetry horizons.)

UPDATE: My own forerunners are these two, although I'm just getting started looking.

While reading old volumes of Poetry Magazine I came across this one, which I was pleased to find on the web.  Not appropriate for a wedding, but wow. 

Ooh, and in my long abandoned Rilke volume I found the page dogeared on this poem.  It's fun to find these old friends, and to discover new ones.  I once read Rilke a lot, when I was younger and more restless, on dark windy nights like this one.   

UPDATE 2: Wow.  How can I write anything, ever again, when it's all been said so well by all these poets?

UPDATE 3:  I promise this is the last one.  Here's a poem I just have to link to, because it uses the title of this weblog, and because it's about a good dog. 

Comments

[mj]

Oh, I LOVE the bread & knife one by Billy Collins... It's nice to read that again.

What kind of wedding/couple is it for? A dreamy, fanstasy-type worthy of "For C.W.B." by Elizabeth Bishop? Or irreverant & modern, more worthy of your Billy Collins or "Prayer for a Marriage" by Steve Scafidi?

(Let me know if you can't track those down...)

[ML]

http://www.nevadacitychamber.com/weddings/readings.htm
At the above address is a poem by D.H. Lawrence called Fidelity that might do.

[a-train]

rumi has some great stuff on love and marriage, kind of mystical but beautiful.

anniversarie by j. donne, also i can't remember the damn name of the poet (a middle eastern guy maybe a "g" in the name) had a nice poem about giving space in a relationship (i.e. so the strings on the instrument can sound)....

anyway for some great poems period, check out thomas hardy ... neutral tones: We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod ...

it only gets better after that. lately i've been digging wallace stevens ... tell us what you read, i'm always looking for new poems and poets too.

[PG]

Recommendations for readings at weddings:
* Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 (Let me not to the marriage of true minds/ Admit impediments. Love is not love/ Which alters when it alteration finds...")

* Khalil Jibran's The Prophet ("Then Almitra spoke again and said, And what of Marriage, Master?/ And he answered saying:/ You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore./ You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days./ Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God./ But let there be spaces in your togetherness,/ And let the winds of the heavens dance between you...")

* I usually tell this one when cornered into speaking a few words at a wedding, but it's more likely to be at the reception:
A Master of Ceremonies at a formal London banquet once asked the guests, "If you could not be who you are, who would you like to be?" Everyone spoke and said this one or that one. Of course, etiquette dictated that last to speak was the guest of honor, who was Winston Churchill. Naturally, everyone was curious as to what Churchill would say. By that time, as an aristocrat with outstanding achievements as a soldier, a writer, a Prime Minister, and a leader in World War II -- and even a pretty good amateur painter -- he was generally thought of as the premier statesman of the twentieth century. Surely it would be impossible for him to want to be anyone else?

Finally it was Winston Churchill's turn to speak. The old gentleman rose: "If I could not be who I am, I would most like to be," he said ... and paused. Then he went to the chair where his wife Clementine sat, took her hand, and finished, "Lady Churchill's SECOND husband."

[Sylvia]

Li Young Lee is one of my all time favorite poets. He has a book called, "The Rose" that is all about love between a husband and wife and a son and his father. It is so beautiful and would be perfect for a wedding. Another great one is Louise Gluck- but her stuff wouldn't be appropriate for a wedding. Another one would be Jane Kenyon's husband- Donald Hall. After she died he wrote some amazing love poems.

[a-train]

Khalil Jibran - that is who I was thinking of (I thought it was spelled Ghibran).

Li Young Lee is great. Another great poet: Han Shan aka Cold Mountain, apparently he lived alone on a mountain in China, after he died they found his poems on the rocks and trees:

Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,

The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:

The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,

The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.

The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain

The pine sings, but there's no wind.

Who can leap the world's ties

And sit with me among the white clouds?

[Elfie]

Man, do I understand about being depressed upon reading really good poetry. I find it excruciating to find that someone has so distilled all that I have ever known into 10 lines. How can I ever have the hubris to take up a pen again? Stay AWAY from Rilke, and you will feel less hopeless as a writer (Have you read the Diary of Malthe Laurenz Brigge? I think particularly you would like it). I second Billy Collins, but some of his are a little too accurate on marriage to be good for a wedding. In a back issue of poetry, take a look for Lynn Powell's "A Kind of Blue." To me, that's a fantastic love poem, but may not fit the mood for a wedding.

[Ima Fake]

Although a Home Rule Bill, supporting the Irish Nationalist demand for independence, passed its final legislative stage in May 1914, it was not implemented as a result of the outbreak of war. Frustration over this situation led to an armed uprising in Dublin on Easter Sunday, 1916.

Easter 1916

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse --
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

William Butler Yeats

[andrew]

I absolutely second the reccomender of Rumi...

I spent waay to many years of my life wandering the corridors of the ivory tower, and because of my particular academic pursuits, I became the friend everyone calls on to read a poem at weddings, usually my own writing, but sometimes not..

about 8 times have I stood up in front of a wedding crowd, its a fun way to honor a freind....

if you are going to walk that art, here is my 2 cents from having done it numerous times.....

Wedding poems need to be direct, clear, and understandable out loud on the first time you hear them, this cuts out many wonderful things.... its hard, because you search by "reading" for something that needs to be "spoken", and will never be "read" by the listener

(that second poem you reccomend, the bread and wine, that would absolutely work out loud, a simple idea elegantly done...)

the best wedding poems have to have a thoughtful "hmmmmm" at the end.. it does not have to be lovey-dovey, in fact, intimations of a touch of fear/uncertainty in the poem, that the marriage ceremony is the answer for, increace the hmmmm, factor..

you gain extra "hmmmm" if its an ancient work, thats why rumi & the song of solomon are perpetual faves... also the more conservative members of the audience will more likely/reflexively accept something that is a thousand years old..

if you can reach the "hmmmm" within a paragraph or two.. that is even better... if its long, each paragraph must end in some new verbal pyrotechnic or laughter, no boredom!!

anyway, on rumi, I keep coming back to this particular author for this occasion, there are lots of translations of rumi, the best one for a modern audience is by Coleman Barks... its thick, but there are jewels in that ore... (and its very available..)

anyway, good luck, instead of just reccomending and running, I leave you with the rumi I had a freind read on my own wedding day (I was "off poem duty" for that event, although I did write the vows!!)

When I am with you, we stay up all night.
when you're not here, I can't go to sleep.

Praise god for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you,
not knowing how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
there in each other all along.

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain

and what cures pain. We are
the sweet, cold water and the jar that pours.

I want to hold you close like a lute
so we can cry out with loving.

You would rather throw stones at a mirror?

I am your mirror, and here are the stones.