Interesting Wedding Poems
Readings To Make Your Civil Ceremony Unforgettable
This article explores the importance of having wedding readings, and suggests some moving and original poems that will make your wedding stand out from all the rest.
Why have wedding readings?
The right reading at your wedding ceremony can make a big difference. It can express feelings that we find hard to communicate in a lyrical way that avoids cliché.
On a more practical level, several readings help to lengthen the all-too- brief civil ceremony. Asking close friends and relatives to deliver a reading makes them formal participants, and so feel a valued part of this most important of days.
Below are some suggestions for imaginative and sometimes unusual poems. It is interesting to note that they all predate the Second World War and as such have an enduring quality – exactly what you want to express about the marriage you are about to celebrate.
E.E. Cummins
Somewhere I Have Never Travelled, by E.E. Cummins is an intense and original piece, as this extract shows: "your slightest look easily will unclose me/ though i have closed myself as fingers/ you open always petal by petal myself as Spring/ opens/ (touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose"
If you choose this poem, it is best to read selected verses – the third and fourth stanzas dwell on death and you may consider them inappropriate for this occasion.
A good idea is to use the adapted version (which omits these two verses), read by Barbara Hershey in the Woody Allen film Hannah And Her Sisters (1986). Hershey recites the words so elegantly that it provides valuable practise for the reader. Just get hold of a copy of the film and repeat after the actress!
Somewhere I have Never Travelled can be found in E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904–1962 (Liveright,1994).
Kahlil Gibran
When the Lebanese Writer and Philosopher Kahlil Gibran died in 1931, he left a great canon of timeless work that continues to inspire people around the world today.
Marriage is a ‘chapter’ in Gibran’s work The Prophet, although it is more akin to poetry than prose: "You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore (...) And let the winds of heaven dance between you."
The pocket edition of The Prophet was published by Knopf in February 1995.
French Wedding Poems
If some of the wedding party speak French, why not think outside the box and choose a Robert Desnos poem? This little known surrealist poet produced a series of passionate love poetry in the 1930’s. Jamais D’autre Que Toi – which translates loosely as "Only You"– appeared in the volume Corps Et Biens in 1930:
‘Est-il encore temps d’atteindre ce corps vivant et de baiser sur cette bouche la naissance d’une voix qui m’est chere?’
J’ai Tant Reve De Toi (which, clumsily translated, means "I’ve Dreamed So Much About You") is also worth considering.
The disadvantage for non-French speakers of not understanding the words is outweighed by the sheer beauty of the language. This is why it is important to have a native, or fluent French speaker do this reading.
Corps et Biens is published in France by Editions Gallimard.
