April 16, 2013
More poetry of married love
Peggy Rosenthal writes: “Life’s fragility: That’s what George and I are experiencing more than ever now. Of course, life is fragile from the day you’re born. But major illness can bring this reality to the forefront of consciousness. Right now it moves me to look back over our forty-plus years of marriage. And to look at them through the lens of poetry. . . .”
This deeply moving essay, with the poetry it includes, defines the ideal essence of marriage more than any of the formal definitions being debated today. It speaks of love between two persons totally committed to each other for the long haul, delighting in each other, marveling that the two found each other, relishing the shared simple occurrences of daily life, treasuring memories, feeling gratitude for the experience of belonging to—and with— another human being (and in particular this human being), braving life’s storms together. Rosenthal’s article comes from Good Letters, the blog of the literary journal Images, a part of the Patheos website. Peggy Rosenthal is a literary critic who writes on poetry as a spiritual practice and leads poetry retreats.
