Marriage Poetry Quotes & Sayings

A great poet has seldom sung of lawfully wedded happiness, but of free and secret love; and in this respect, too the time is coming when there will no longer be one standard of morality for poetry and another for life. To anyone tender of conscience, the ties formed by a free connection are stronger than the legal ones. — Ellen Key

I did know Ted Hughes and I partly wrote the book to explain to myself and others the complexities of a marriage that was for six years wonderfully productive of poetry and then ended in tragedy. — Anne Stevenson

My husband says spring will be early.
He says this every year,
And every year I disagree.
He needs me, the dark side of the planetary equation.
Together we make the equinox. — Lisel Mueller

Your skin reminds me of everything beautiful I've ever loved ...
how the moon gets jealous at how you mock her crescent figure with the shape of your mouth ...
echo of unborn galaxies bounce forth through your vocal chords ... — Brandi L. Bates

Horse

What does the horse give you
That I cannot give you?

I watch you when you are alone,
When you ride into the field behind the dairy,
Your hands buried in the mare's
Dark mane.

Then I know what lies behind your silence:
Scorn, hatred of me, of marriage. Still,
You want me to touch you; you cry out
As brides cry, but when I look at you I see
There are no children in your body.
Then what is there?

Nothing, I think. Only haste
To die before I die.

In a dream, I watched you ride the horse
Over the dry fields and then
Dismount: you two walked together;
In the dark, you had no shadows.
But I felt them coming toward me
Since at night they go anywhere,
They are their own masters.

Look at me. You think I don't understand?
What is the animal
If not passage out of this life? — Louise Gluck

Marriage is a book in which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose. — Beverley Nichols

New York has the gay marriage now," Camilla said. "You should propose. Make things legal." "I don't think Garrett is interested in settling down, Aunt Camilla." "He's had his fun," Nonna said. "Now it's time to put a leash on him. That will settle him right down. I was just as wild before your Grandpa Frank proposed. Had some idea I was going to run off to Argentina and write poetry or maybe marry Tommy Dellacroce and be a mafia princess, but Frank proposed first. — Irene Preston

Marriage is a contract between 2 people male and female;doing what it takes to make the union work until death due them apart — Martellis Thurmand

What is the world? What is it for?
It is an art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite. Assess it like prose, like poetry, like architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, delta blues, opera, tragedy, comedy, romance, epic. Assess it like you would a Faberge egg, like a gunfight, like a musical, like a snowflake, like a death, a birth, a triumph, a love story, a tornado, a smile, a heartbreak, a sweater, a hunger pain, a desire, a fufillment, a desert, a waterfall, a song, a race, a frog, a play, a song, a marriage, a consummation, a thirst quenched.
Assess it like that. And when you're done, find an ant and have him assess the cathedrals of Europe. — N.D. Wilson

As Unto the bow the the cord is ,
So unto the man is woman;
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
Though she draws him , yet she follows:
Useless each without the other. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

You make such beautiful poetry out of what you call your love and your unhappiness. Marriage would be such a dull affair in comparison. — Orna Ross

London
I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow;
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse. — William Blake

I don't call it hate . . . I call it an awakening . . . you were the girl I chose, pure, loyal, untainted, an exemplary wife, and instead I get a schemer, plotting to pursue her own rotten ambition under the rubric of poetry . . . what a mockery, what a marriage. — Edna O'Brien

A poem is a piece of semiotic sport, in which the signifier has been momentarily released from its grim communicative labours and can disport itself disgracefully. Freed from a loveless marriage to a single meaning, it can play the field, wax promiscous, gambol outrageously with similar unattached signifiers. If the guardians of conventional morality knew what scandalous stuff they were inscribing on their tombstones, they would cease to do so immediately. — Terry Eagleton

She was married, true; but if one's husband was always sailing round Cape Horn, was it marriage? If one liked him, was it marriage? If one liked other people, was it marriage? And finally, if one still wished, more than anything in the whole world, to write poetry, was it marriage? She had her doubts. — Virginia Woolf

I want a marriage of companions - one of shared lives and shared poems,' he murmured. 'If we were husband and wife, we would collect books, read, and drink tea together. As I told you before, I'd want you for what's in here.'
Again he pointed to my heart, but I felt it in a place far lower in my body. — Lisa See

My wife is a thief...
She takes the last cookie
Takes forever to get ready
She takes her time in the shower
Takes all of the hot water
She takes my favorite seat on the couch
Takes the high road when I lose control
My wife is a thief...
She took my last name
Took the time to get to know me, love me
She took the back seat and let me lead
Took on motherhood and the emotional toll that it brings
She took care of me the many times that I've gotten sick
Took on the pain of pregnancy so that the Jackson legacy would live on
My wife takes, and takes, and takes...
I'm so proud of my perpetual thief who stole my heart and won't give it back. — David Jackson

Deb and I were married on a snowy night - wind cross-wove a veil of snow for her then threw confetti at us as we left the lighted church ... — John Geddes

Lot's Wife

And the just man trailed God's messenger,
his huge, light shape devoured the black hill.
But uneasiness shadowed is wife and spoke to her:
'It's not too late, you can look back still

At the red towers of Sodom, the place that bore you,
the square in which you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows of that upper storey
where children blessed your happy marriage-bed.'

Her eyes that were still turning when a bolt
of pain shot through them, were instantly blind;
her body turned into transparent salt,
and her swift legs were rooted to the ground.

Who mourns one woman in a holocaust?
Surely her death has no significance?
Yet in my heart she never will be lost,
she who gave up her life to steal one glance.

1922-24 — Anna Akhmatova

The Sleeping

I have imagined all this:
In 1940 my parents were in love
And living in the loft on West 10th
Above Mark Rothko who painted cabbage roses
On their bedroom walls the night they got married.

I can guess why he did it.
My mother's hair was the color of yellow apples
And she wore a velvet hat with her pajamas.

I was not born yet. I was remote as starlight.
It is hard for me to imagine that
My parents made love in a roomful of roses
And I wasn't there.

But now I am. My mother is blushing.
This is the wonderful thing about art.
It can bring back the dead. It can wake the sleeping
As it might have late that night
When my father and mother made love above Rothko
Who lay in the dark thinking Roses, Roses, Roses. — Lynn Emanuel

Celibacy is like poetry keeping the idea ever in mind like a dream; but marriage uses chisel and brush, concentrating more on marble and canvas. Celibacy jumps to a conclusion like an intuition; marriage, like reason, labors through ebb and flow, step by step. — Fulton J. Sheen

Do You Believe
Do you believe
that I have loved you
since the dawn of time?
Do you believe
that we were destined
to be intertwined? ... — Muse

Sappho is a great poet because she is a lesbian, which gives her erotic access to the Muse. Sappho and the homosexual-tending Emily Dickinson stand alone above women poets, because poetry's mystical energies are ruled by a hierach requiring the sexual subordination of her petitioners. Women have achieved more as novelists than as poets because the social novel operates outside the ancient marriage of myth and eroticism. — Camille Paglia

This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime, who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning, forced marriage of underage girls and flogging for not wearing the veil? Do such practices represent Iran's ancient history and culture, its ethnic and religious diversity? Its centuries of sensual and subversive poetry? — Azar Nafisi

Lorenzo: In such a night stood Dido with a willow in her hand upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love to come again to Carthage
Jessica: In such a night Medea gathered the enchanted herbs that did renew old Aeson.
Lorenzo: In such a night did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, and with an unthrift love did run from Venice, as far as Belmont.
Jessica: In such a night did young Lorenzo swear he lov'd her well, stealing her soul with many vows of faith, and ne'er a true one.
Lorenzo: In such a night did pretty Jessica (like a little shrow) slander her love, and he forgave it her.
Jessica: I would out-night you, did nobody come; but hark, I hear the footing of a man. — William Shakespeare

Here is Lady Winchilsea, for example, I thought, taking down her poems. She was born in the year 1661; she was noble both by birth and by marriage; she was childless; she wrote poetry, and one has only to open her poetry to find her bursting out in indignation against the position of women: — Virginia Woolf

He is the Way.
Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth.
Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;
You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.

He is the Life.
Love Him in the World of the Flesh;
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy. — W. H. Auden

So I'll be your queen if you'll be my king,
My knight to defend my claimed heart.
I need no crown, just your last name and a ring
And the promise you'll never depart. — Phar West Nagle

The computer is incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid.
Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate, and brilliant.
The marriage of the two is a force beyond calculation. — Waseem Latif

How does a poet know when a poem is ended? Because it lies flat, taut; nothing can be added or subtracted. How does a woman know when a marriage is over? Because of the way her life suddenly shears off in just two directions: past and future. — Carol Shields

Some women marry houses. — Anne Sexton

Marriage I think
For women
Is the best of opiates.
It kills the thoughts
That think about the thoughts,
It is the best of opiates.
So said Maria.
But too long in solitude she'd dwelt,
And too long her thoughts had felt
Their strength. So when the man drew near,
Out popped her thoughts and covered him with fear.
Poor Maria!
Better that she had kept her thoughts on a chain,
For now she's alone again and all in pain;
She sighs for the man that went and the thoughts that stay
To trouble her dreams by night and her dreams by day. — Stevie Smith

The Apache don't have a word for love," he said.
"Know what they both say at the marriage? The squaw-taking ceremony?"
"Tell me."
"Varlebena. It means forever. That's all they say. — Louis L'Amour

Marriage, in my culture, has nothing to do with romance. It's a matter of logic. If Mr. and Mrs. Ahmadi like Mr. and Mrs. Nejari, then their children should get married. On the other hand, if the parents don't like each other, but the children do, well, this is where sad poetry comes from. — Firoozeh Dumas

Attraction

The whites of his eyes
pull me like moons.
He smiles. I believe
his face. Already
my body slips down in the chair:

I recline on my side,
offering peeled grapes.
I can taste his tongue
in my mouth
whenever he speaks.

I suspect he lies.
But my body oils itself loose.
When he gets up to fix a drink
my legs like derricks
hoist me off the seat.
I am thirsty, it seams.

Already I see the seduction
far off in the distance
like a large tree
dwarfed by a rise
in the road.

I put away objections
as quietly as quilts.
Already I explain to myself
how marriages are broken--
accidentally, like arms or legs. — Enid Shomer

After my marriage ended, I had an urge to skip that part of my life completely in terms of poetry, not publish anything at all about it. — Denise Duhamel

Form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. — Wendell Berry

Go on down to the local palm reader,
she'll spit out exactly what you feed her
because honey, you already knew
your husband was a cheater. — Casey Renee Kiser

Dating is poetry. Marriage is a novel. There are times, maybe years, that are all exposition. — Ada Calhoun

Her magnificence is deeper than skin. — Delano Johnson

Do You Believe
... on this road of life
on this day
I take you
now husband and wife ... — Muse

He remembers which sister
I like least and asks
how she is doing.
(lines 9-11 of the poem 'Divorce') — Carrie Etter

I can't help but notice that you keep writing love poetry to my wife. Well, you see, I married her, which makes her my wife. You know what you might want to try? Writing some poems about the sunset. The sunset isn't fucking married. — A. J. Jacobs

All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics. — William Blake

I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow;
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.

- London — William Blake

Should I get married? Should I be good? — Gregory Corso

How do I feel today? I feel as unfit as an unfiddle,
And it is the result of a certain turbulence in the mind and an uncertain burbulence in the middle.
What was it, anyway, that angry thing that flew at me?
I am unused to banshees crying Boo at me.
Your wife can't be a banshee
Or can she? — Ogden Nash