Ross Gay’s “Wedding Poem” is written in a single stanza of free verse, with no formal pattern of rhyme or meter. Its form, however, is particular. “Wedding Poem” is an epithalamion—a piece of verse composed for a wedding (from the dedication, the reader can surmise that the intended couple is “Keith and Jen”). The name derives from the Greek for “upon” and “nuptial chamber,” and indicates a song sung in praise of Hymen, the Greek god of marriage. In antiquity, it was performed outside the wedding chamber. In modern times, the epithalamion is most often performed at the wedding itself, or at the reception. Themes vary, but many poems take a long view of marriage and its ups and downs, offering advice on navigating cycles of togetherness.

Gay’s poem returns to the idea and presence of consummation and carnal delight. While the speaker does not directly describe sex in his account of the goldfinch and the sunflower, the tone is unequivocally lusty. The exchange is not gratuitously sexual, but an example of the pure and organic pleasure that can come of unbridled intercourse with another being, beyond the judgment of anyone outside that union.