Wedding Poem

From the title of Ross Gay’s “Wedding Poem,” the reader understands that this is an epithalamion, or poem intended to celebrate nuptials. The speaker invokes the language of a traditional wedding ceremony by beginning the poem in the manner of an officiate: “Friends I am here” (Line 1) echoes the phrase, “We are gathered here,” an opener recognizable as the beginning of many a wedding ceremony, in tone if not verbatim. In addition, a dedication reads, “for Keith and Jen,” presumably the couple for whom the poem is written.

The speaker proceeds to “modestly report” (Line 1) something he’d seen in his hometown, “in an orchard” (Line 2). While the mention of a “town” (Line 3) does not necessarily indicate an urban environment, the impression is that the orchard exists in a populated environment, rather than in a typical rural setting. The orchard is visible, in other words, to passersby. What the speaker sees is “a goldfinch kissing / a sunflower” (Lines 4-5). While the two protagonists of the story are a bird and a plant, the fact that they kiss, “again and again” (Line 6) sets a romantic tone.

The speaker goes on to describe the actions of the bird, who, like an aerialist, is hanging upside down, using its wings “like an old-timey fan” (Line 10), repeatedly “snapping open” (Line 9) to keep its balance and position. Small talons gripping, wings flapping, the bird enacts this communion with the flower with its entire body. At some point the bird is overcome and swoons away from the sunflower—only to swoop back for more.

The sunflower, for its part, a welcoming partner in events, enveloping the bird before it leans “back / to admire the soft wind / nudging the bird’s plumage” (Lines 17-19). The dance between the two intensifies as the flower lifts “the food of its body” (Line 24) for the goldfinch to nuzzle. The speaker suggests not only that this event lasted a significant amount of time, but that it was loud, the “fervor” (Line 26) audible from “20 or 30 feet away” (Line 28). In addition, they were making a mess, showering sunflower seed shells everywhere. This “good racket” (Line 31) is enough to cause the speaker to “blush” (Line 33), which is evocative, as the whole scene is, of lovemaking—and right out in the open, where anyone can see. The speaker, however, far from being embarrassed, is delighted enough to “rock up on” (Line 34) his tiptoes and “just barely purse [his] lips” (Line 35), a physical reaction to being happy in the presence of what the speaker sees, through the example of the goldfinch and the sunflower, as love in the world. He suggests that “we” (Line 39)—human beings—could feel this particular gladness so long as we are open to bearing witness to it.

Many epithalamion poems offer advice to the happy couple, as in Kahlil Gibran’s poem, “On Marriage,” in which the poet advises a couple to retain their individuality within their union. Wedding poems often utilize images from nature to deliver their messages, as in Jane Hirshfield’s poem, “A Blessing for Wedding,” in which the speaker invokes the ripening of persimmons and the falling of leaves from a maple tree. Seasonal cycles often play a thematic part in the epithalamion. In “Wedding Poem,” Gay, too, plucks his metaphor from nature. In his poem, however, the focus is not on what the future will hold, or the changes a couple may have to face, but on pure present-tense ecstasy. The speaker, in relating his story, advocates for the moment, and particularly, for a moment of abandon. The opportunity to abandon oneself to another, the speaker suggests, presents a wild joy that has precedent in the world and is available to all of us. Birds do it, bees do it. Even goldfinches eating sunflower seeds do it. Devotion and joy are, in moments, physical experiences rather than abstract ideas. To stand in witness to two people getting married is to celebrate these moments of bodily joy and our capacity to experience them, as well as the broader institution of marriage.

Another way to look at “Wedding Poem” is as a testament to focus. The speaker, focused on the scene that develops before him—even “20 or 30 feet away” (Line 28)— lends deep detail to what he sees. His are not the observations of a person just strolling by. Through his account, the reader is made to “see” the “tiny claws” (Line 8) of the bird, with its feathers fanned out like “an old-timey fan” (Line 10). Through the speaker, the reader imagines the breeze ruffling the bird’s feathers, and the petals of the flower as they “soften and curl” (Line 22). It is an event, perhaps, that takes place all day long in the season when goldfinches are hungry and sunflower seeds are ripe, but one must stop and take in the details to feel the pleasure, at first vicarious and then internalized, that such “fervor” (Line 26) elicits. In this way the poem can be read as an ars poetica, or a poem about poetry. The poem happens, the poet suggests, through close observation of the world. This kind of deep attention opens the poem—and the poet—to the sublime.