Wedding reading for "love after hitting rock bottom"

May 21, 2023 9:52 AM

You all helped me a lot find good poems for an autumn wedding. Now the mother of one of the people in that couple is getting married and I am looking, at her request, for readings on the subject of "finding love after hitting rock bottom."

I am presuming, but do not know, that this is referring to people in recovery. Having not been in recovery but knowing many people who have, I'd like to be sensitive to this while at the same time not necessarily just going with something I get from Googling "love after hitting rock bottom" if there's something better out there. Do you know anything along these lines that has been meaningful to you? Wedding is likely casual so while I did find this writing by Henry James that was sort of lovely, I think I'm looking for something more colloquial. Thank you.

posted by jessamyn to Writing & Language (8 answers total)

Best answer: Both of them were uncertain; both of them were trying as much as they could; both of them would doubt themselves, would progress and recede. But they would both keep trying, because they trusted the other, and because the other person was the only other person who would ever be worth such hardships, such difficulties, such insecurities and exposure. -- Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

Love may be sanctified and ennobled by its commitment to the unconditional horizon of perfection, but what makes love real in the human world seems to be our moving, struggling conversation with that wanted horizon rather than any possibility of arrival. -- David Whyte

Mouthful of Forevers
I am not the first person you loved. You are not the first person I looked at with a mouthful of forevers. We have both known loss like the sharp edges of a knife. We have both lived with lips more scar tissue than skin. Our love came unannounced in the middle of the night. Our love came when we’d given up on asking love to come. I think that has to be part of its miracle. -- Clementine von Radics

Habitation
Marriage is not
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
The edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
we are learning to make fire.
-- Margaret Atwood


Benedicto
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.
-- Edward Abbey
posted by cocoagirl at 10:45 AM on May 21, 2023 [9 favorites]

Happiness
BY JANE KENYON
There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.
posted by CMcG at 11:40 AM on May 21, 2023 [7 favorites]

Not exactly what you're looking for, but definitely a more cynical, worldly-wise-&-weary take on love:

Shakespeare
Sonnet 138

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearnèd in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
Oh, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
posted by Saxon Kane at 12:14 PM on May 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

This may be more depressing than you want, and I seem to recall that Katha Pollitt has had some unfortunate opinions of late, but I really love her poem "Small Comfort":

Coffee and cigarettes in a clean cafe,
forsythia lit like a damp match against
a thundery sky drunk on its own ozone,

the laundry cool and crisp and folded away
again in the lavender closet—too late to find
comfort enough in such small daily moments

of beauty, renewal, calm, too late to imagine
people would rather be happy than suffering
and inflicting suffering. We're near the end,

but O before the end, as the sparrows wing
each night to their secret nests in the elm's green dome
O let the last bus bring

love to lover, let the starveling
dog turn the corner and lope suddenly
miraculously, down its own street, home.
posted by babelfish at 2:53 PM on May 21, 2023

It's a song, not a poem; but Attics of My Life by the Grateful Dead has some beautiful lines. Particularly:


When I had no wings to fly, you flew to me.
posted by Gray Duck at 3:46 PM on May 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

I immediately thought of this song; here's a nice cover. Your love has lifted me higher
posted by theora55 at 4:07 PM on May 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

My husband chose this for our wedding, from Homer's Odyssey:

Now from his breast into the eyes the ache
of longing mounted, and he wept at last,
his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,
longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
spent in rough water where his ship went down
under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big serf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,
her white arms round him pressed as though forever.

I think 'in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind' is particularly beautiful.
posted by In Your Shell Like at 4:33 AM on May 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions. For this particular ceremony (which you can read here) I went with Mouthful of Forevers, though I used a longer version, and wrapped up with the Abbey benediction. It was a lovely ceremony and I'll save the rest of these for future ceremonies.
posted by jessamyn at 7:35 AM on May 28, 2023