"Ever After" by Joyce Sutphen

As I was searching to pick out a poem that caught my eye, this one in particular, gave me curiosity and a little bit of sadness. Now I’m not one to enjoy the feeling of being sad, but the way Joyce Sutphen incorporates her words and describes her situation, shows it written quite beautifully.

After reading the poem aloud several times, I noticed that it is talking about a previous marriage which ultimately did not succeed. This affected my response to the poem by leaving me left with questions about the marriage and wanting to know more about what happened.

What specifically happened in their marriage, or was it just simply not working? Why did they rarely use the words husband and wife? What do the layers of the cake represent? Did they get married too young? What was their ever after? All of these questions accumulated through my mind as I tried to comprehend what Joyce was describing.

In the beginning of the poem, she distinctively mentions that they are separate and no longer an “us”. Then it says “unrelated persons except for that ex that goes in front of the words.”… This obviously helps explains a marriage that fell apart. They hardly said the words husband and wife which tell that maybe they never really were prepared for marriage or it didn’t even work out from the very beginning.

Also, Joyce brings up the fact that when they were “young and hopeless”, they had to pose with both hands clasping on to a knife “that was sinking into to the tall white cake. All that sweetness, the layers of one thing and then another, and then one thing again.” Therefore, there is a note that they were young when her and her husband got married and maybe this was the reason for their marriage failure.

 

Divorce is especially common in our generation for many different reasons and one of them includes being young. Joyce described HER divorce and how she felt about it. She even asks a few questions herself which shows that she is still somewhat concerned about what happened and why. I love the imagery she gives with the cake, which refers to a wedding cake. The knife cutting deep into the “tall” cake equals to their life together as a couple. What once was together, is now broken into pieces like slices of cake.

 Taking into account, the layers of the cake, that sweetness, displays the layers of their marriage. To some extent, maybe the couple’s initial thought of marriage seemed to be such sweetness, however, it turned out to be something different; A different layer.

To tell her rather brief story, my guess is that the poet left out the information that she did in order to bring emphasis on the main points and show her feelings about the entire situation. This leaves me feeling frustrated because I want to know more of what happened in their marriage that led up to such crucial circumstances.

Something that really interest me with this poem was the title in which the poet chose. “Ever After” reminds me of the common phrase, “Happily ever after” and what Joyce did here was take off the word happily and leave the rest. This can conclude the whole poem by saying that this fault in her life had an impact on her and her husband for the rest of their lives, as separate individuals instead of one.