Alain de Botton takes a sledgehammer to the notions of romanticism that spawn unrealistic expectations in relationships which eventually lead to disillusionment and painful parting.
Tag: marriage
Erika Michael – Entanglement
Relationships that defy boundaries: Erika Michael's 'Entanglement' is an ode to her late husband and a poem about love after death.
Lori Rottenberg – Heresy
Lori Rottenberg wrote her poem, Heresy, when her children were young and she was a stay-at-home mom.
All Real Living
BY JOHN JACOBSON A husband and wife live together with a rare neurological disease. The illness profoundly changed their love and brought about a search for meaning.
Words of Advice from Ruth Bader Ginsburg
In tribute, and with gratitude to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, here is a selection of some of her finest pieces of wisdom.
David Rosenheim – Pineapple Sage
Pineapple Sage was written in David Rosenheim's 'postage-stamp-sized back garden, which he says, 'continues to unfold as a canvas for close inspection.'
Margaret Atwood – Habitation
Using the stark language of cold glaciers and barren deserts, Margaret Atwood paints a picture of marriage as something that survives on the very peripheries of primitive forces and natural epics. Not a house or even a tent, it's a place where we are 'learning to make fire', as though we are still in the very first and most primal stages of the endeavor.Â
Ada Limón – Wife
Ada Limón's poem, Wife, examines the secret pitfalls of marriage from a woman's perspective; poignantly, from the point of view of a newlywed, of someone entering unchartered territory that has been laid out and defined for her by the generations that preceded her.
Beck – Everlasting Nothing
Everlasting Nothing is the final track on singer/songwriter Beck's album Hyperspace. It describes a series of experiences with an unreal bent in which there is a continuous push to 'get back home'.
The Draw of the Dark Ages – Rachel Cusk
'Division is also an aspect of unification,' writer Rachel Cusk at the beginning of her memoir, Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation. Here she is talking about the Dark Ages and the nature of their fragmentation in contrast to the two civilizations that bookended them. It's a question, she says, of unity versus compartmentalization, of diversity and flourishing in… Continue reading The Draw of the Dark Ages – Rachel Cusk