A sparkling collection of poems about virtually every aspect of matrimony: courtships and weddings, adulteries and separations, domestic harmony, wedded bliss. Here are marriages made in many cultures and eras, delightfully evoked by poets ranging from Shakespeare to Omar Khayyám to D.H. Lawrence and Mona Van Duyn. From the rapturous infatuation of the Song of Songs to Ovid's cynical advice on 'The Art of Deceiving a Husband,' no facet of the matrimonial state remains unexplored.