Let's try writing a verse epistle. Make your letter poem Horatian or Ovidian, whatever sparks your imagination. See below for what this means, for background, history, and my own thoughts about letter poems.
But write it to someone, some group or coterie. Your recipient can be very personal or remote, concrete (flesh and blood) or abstract.
Your subject can be anything--love, sex, death, art, poetry, politics, technology, work, daily living, conscience, belief, loss of faith--anything.
Your treatment of the subject can be how you feel about it, how you think your recipient feels, what you believe to be true and/or false, or an exploration of what the subject means.
For convenience's sake, and to get your motor running, I suggest you open with "Dear . . ."
Before you start making a poem, I also suggest that you take some time to think about your recipient. Analyze your audience. If it's a person, make some notes about the person, your relationship, what you know about him or her and how this person thinks, what she believes, etc. Consider why you are writing to this person, just as if you'd sat down to jot a normal letter--what news do you have to share? why do you want to share it? what are you asking the recipient to do, if anything, besides read your letter? This process will help you determine how intimate your verse letter is going to be, or how communal (for example: W.C. Williams' note to Flossie about eating the plums vs. Walt Whitman's letter to the generations of Americans to come after he is gone and is grass under our feet).
Some Background on Verse Epistle
The website of The Academy of American Poets defines "verse epistle" as "poems that read as letters." The Academy goes on . . .
"The appeal of epistolary poems is in their freedom. The audience can be internal or external. The poet may be speaking to an unnamed recipient or to the world at large, to bodiless entities or to abstract concepts."
For the Academy's discussion, plus examples, click here, verse epistle.
Historically, there are two kinds of verse epistle: the Horatian and the Ovidian. Read these names as placeholders for "moral and philosophical subjects" and "sentimental subjects," respectively. The implication is that there are two reasons to write a letter poem. The first is to explore a subject deeply, in a kind of thinking out loud to a correspondent. The second is to write a love letter. Ovid's approach was popular in the Middle Ages and Renaissance; think courtly love poetry, the troubadours, the great love sonnet sequences. Horace's innovation had traction in the Renaissance and Neoclassical periods. Pope, for instance, wrote his Moral Essays in the form of verse letters, as well as Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.
The letter poem can be lengthy and developed into an extended argument--see Pope, and Sydney's Astrophel and Stella--and it can be shorter, more lyrical, as in individual sonnets within a sequence (see especially the first 18 of Shakespeare's group). To be clear, though, the Sonnets are not voiced as letters, though they are messages/entreaties to a specific person. Like letters, they imply an expectation that the recipient will take some kind of action--read the message, do as the message directs . . .
You'll recall that we touched on similar forms of direct address, like apostrophe (see my blog entry for 1.31.18), and poems written "in conversation with" or in reply to other poems (see entries for 6.13.18 and 1.20.19). But though these forms are similar, they are not identical, and for one very good reason. A letter not only points to a recipient, a specific reader, but to an action--a private reading--and possibly to another action--a reply. When you've written letters before, were they intended for a specific recipient and not to be shared? Paul's letters to the Corinthians were intended only for them. Love letters are troved away, then discovered decades into a marriage that did not create them, and we are injured (or entertained) on both sides.
Certainly, you have written a letter in anticipation of a reply? Common closings to a letter--"I await your reply . . ." "Please let me know . . ." "If I don't hear back from you . . ." "Write back and let me know how all are doing."
And even if no reply is expected, letters aren't one way communications (Dear John letters and letters to the editor aside). They may bring news, but they assume the recipient will be interested to know the news, will likewise find it informative, fascinating, funny, infuriating, odd, uplifting, tragic, etc. The writer will understand, or believe she understands, that her reader will react, and even imagine how the reader will react to what is put into the letter. These assumptions insure the two-way communication even if the recipient doesn't or isn't intended to reply.
But letter poems are not just personal letters with news to share. They are works of art and, as such, ask for an audience, not merely a recipient. An audience of a letter poem--even an audience of one--will read beyond the content to the form in which it is written, to its emotional affect, to its engagement with language. As works of art, letter poems are as much about themselves as made things as they are "about" their content, like any other poem. Speaking of emotional affect, a letter poem, because it's a poem, will express and try to communicate an emotion via all the tools and techniques we've studied at Wednesdays@One: image, metaphor, rhythm and meter, syntax, line, rhyme or its absence, allusion, point of view, voice, etc.
When I read a letter poem, I like the feeling that I'm listening in or that I am the one being written to: the lover, the cohort, the enemy, the friend . . . Reading a letter poem puts me into a unique position with regard to the poet, the persona represented in the poem, and to myself.
So, before you begin writing your letter poem, read through the examples below. Put yourself in the role of the person or concept to whom the letter poem is addressed (I am Flossie; I am America). Consider the subject, of course, but also give thought to how it is presented, the techniques, figures, cadences, stresses, etc. that are employed, and what tone of voice and emotion are elicited through these devices.
The poems that follow are "letters" in their several ways. One or two aren't actually offered as letters, like the section from Song of Myself. Some are formally so, opening with the standard salutation of "Dear . . .," and are equipped with a closing. Others are simply messages, notes, postcards, like the Williams poem, which you'd imagine finding taped to the refrigerator door. But they read "as letters" in that each is aimed at or addressed to someone or some group in an implied correspondence. The Williams poem is simple, unironic, almost unadorned, as you'd expect from him. The Bishop poem is deliciously nuanced and full of implication and sub-text.
But write it to someone, some group or coterie. Your recipient can be very personal or remote, concrete (flesh and blood) or abstract.
Your subject can be anything--love, sex, death, art, poetry, politics, technology, work, daily living, conscience, belief, loss of faith--anything.
Your treatment of the subject can be how you feel about it, how you think your recipient feels, what you believe to be true and/or false, or an exploration of what the subject means.
The website of The Academy of American Poets defines "verse epistle" as "poems that read as letters." The Academy goes on . . .
"The appeal of epistolary poems is in their freedom. The audience can be internal or external. The poet may be speaking to an unnamed recipient or to the world at large, to bodiless entities or to abstract concepts."
For the Academy's discussion, plus examples, click here, verse epistle.
Historically, there are two kinds of verse epistle: the Horatian and the Ovidian. Read these names as placeholders for "moral and philosophical subjects" and "sentimental subjects," respectively. The implication is that there are two reasons to write a letter poem. The first is to explore a subject deeply, in a kind of thinking out loud to a correspondent. The second is to write a love letter. Ovid's approach was popular in the Middle Ages and Renaissance; think courtly love poetry, the troubadours, the great love sonnet sequences. Horace's innovation had traction in the Renaissance and Neoclassical periods. Pope, for instance, wrote his Moral Essays in the form of verse letters, as well as Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.
The letter poem can be lengthy and developed into an extended argument--see Pope, and Sydney's Astrophel and Stella--and it can be shorter, more lyrical, as in individual sonnets within a sequence (see especially the first 18 of Shakespeare's group). To be clear, though, the Sonnets are not voiced as letters, though they are messages/entreaties to a specific person. Like letters, they imply an expectation that the recipient will take some kind of action--read the message, do as the message directs . . .
You'll recall that we touched on similar forms of direct address, like apostrophe (see my blog entry for 1.31.18), and poems written "in conversation with" or in reply to other poems (see entries for 6.13.18 and 1.20.19). But though these forms are similar, they are not identical, and for one very good reason. A letter not only points to a recipient, a specific reader, but to an action--a private reading--and possibly to another action--a reply. When you've written letters before, were they intended for a specific recipient and not to be shared? Paul's letters to the Corinthians were intended only for them. Love letters are troved away, then discovered decades into a marriage that did not create them, and we are injured (or entertained) on both sides.
Certainly, you have written a letter in anticipation of a reply? Common closings to a letter--"I await your reply . . ." "Please let me know . . ." "If I don't hear back from you . . ." "Write back and let me know how all are doing."
And even if no reply is expected, letters aren't one way communications (Dear John letters and letters to the editor aside). They may bring news, but they assume the recipient will be interested to know the news, will likewise find it informative, fascinating, funny, infuriating, odd, uplifting, tragic, etc. The writer will understand, or believe she understands, that her reader will react, and even imagine how the reader will react to what is put into the letter. These assumptions insure the two-way communication even if the recipient doesn't or isn't intended to reply.
But letter poems are not just personal letters with news to share. They are works of art and, as such, ask for an audience, not merely a recipient. An audience of a letter poem--even an audience of one--will read beyond the content to the form in which it is written, to its emotional affect, to its engagement with language. As works of art, letter poems are as much about themselves as made things as they are "about" their content, like any other poem. Speaking of emotional affect, a letter poem, because it's a poem, will express and try to communicate an emotion via all the tools and techniques we've studied at Wednesdays@One: image, metaphor, rhythm and meter, syntax, line, rhyme or its absence, allusion, point of view, voice, etc.
When I read a letter poem, I like the feeling that I'm listening in or that I am the one being written to: the lover, the cohort, the enemy, the friend . . . Reading a letter poem puts me into a unique position with regard to the poet, the persona represented in the poem, and to myself.
So, before you begin writing your letter poem, read through the examples below. Put yourself in the role of the person or concept to whom the letter poem is addressed (I am Flossie; I am America). Consider the subject, of course, but also give thought to how it is presented, the techniques, figures, cadences, stresses, etc. that are employed, and what tone of voice and emotion are elicited through these devices.
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The poems that follow are "letters" in their several ways. One or two aren't actually offered as letters, like the section from Song of Myself. Some are formally so, opening with the standard salutation of "Dear . . .," and are equipped with a closing. Others are simply messages, notes, postcards, like the Williams poem, which you'd imagine finding taped to the refrigerator door. But they read "as letters" in that each is aimed at or addressed to someone or some group in an implied correspondence. The Williams poem is simple, unironic, almost unadorned, as you'd expect from him. The Bishop poem is deliciously nuanced and full of implication and sub-text.
This Is Just to Say
--William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
from Song of Myself (section 52)
--Walt Whitman
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place, search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
A Letter to William Carlos Williams
--Kenneth Rexroth
Dear Bill,
When I search the past for you,
Sometimes I think you are like
St. Francis, whose flesh went out
Like a happy cloud from him,
And merged with every lover--
Donkeys, flowers, lepers, suns--
But I think you are more like
Brother Juniper, who suffered
All indignities and glories
Laughing like a gentle fool.
You're in the Fioretti
Somewhere, for you're a fool, Bill,
Like the Fool in Yeats, the term
Of all wisdom and beauty.
It's you, stands over against
Helen in all her wisdom,
Solomon in all his glory.
Remember years ago, when
I told you you were the first
Great Franciscan poet since
The Middle Ages? I disturbed
The even tenor of dinner.
Your wife thought I was crazy.
It's true, though. And you're "pure," too,
A real classic, though not loud
About it--a whole lot like
The girls of the Anthology.
Not like strident Sappho, who
For all her grandeur, must have
Had endemetriosis,
But like Anyte, who says
Just enough, softly, for all
The thousands of years to remember.
It's a wonderful quiet
You have, a way of keeping
Still about the world, and its
Dirty rivers, and garbage cans,
Red wheelbarrows glazed with rain,
Cold plums stolen from the icebox,
And Queen Anne's Lace, and day's eyes,
And leaf buds bursting over
Muddy roads, and splotched bellies
With babies in them, and Cortes
And Malinche on the bloody
Causeway, the death of the flower world.
Nowadays, when the press reels
With chatterboxes, you keep still,
Each year a sheaf of stillness,
Poems that have nothing to say,
Like the stillness of George Fox,
Sitting still under the cloud
Of all the world's temptation,
By the fire, in the kitchen,
In the Vale of Beavor. And
The archetype, the silence
Of Christ, when he paused a long
Time and then said, "Thou sayest it."
Now in a recent poem you say,
"I who am about to die."
Maybe this is just a tag
From the classics, but it sends
A shudder over me. Where
Do you get that stuff, Williams?
Look at here. The day will come
When a young woman will walk
By the lucid Williams River,
Where it flows through an idyllic
News from Nowhere sort of landscape,
And she will way to her children,
"Isn't it beautiful? It
Is named after a man who
Walked here once when it was called
The Passaic, and was filthy
With the poisonous excrements
Of sick men and factories.
He was a great man. He knew
It was beautiful then, although
Nobody else did, back there
In the Dark Ages. And the
Beautiful river he saw
Still flows in his veins, as it
Does in ours, and flows in our eyes,
And flows in time, and makes us
Part of it, and part of him.
That, children, is what is called
A sacramental relationship.
And that is what a poet
Is, children, one who creates
Sacramental relationships
That last always."
With love and admiration,
Kenneth Rexroth.
A Poem to Galway Kinnell
--Etheridge Knight
Sat., Apr. 26, 1973
Jefferson City, Mo. 65101
(500 yards, as the crow flies,
from where I am writing you
this letter, lies the Missouri
State Prison--it lies, the prison,
like an overfed bear alongside
the raging Missouri river--
the pale prison, out of which,
sonny liston, with clenched fist,
fought his way, out of which,
james earl ray ripped his way
into the hearts of us all . . .)
dear galway,
it is flooding here, in Missouri,
the lowlands are all under water and at night
the lights dance on the dark water,
our president, of late of Watergate,
is spozed to fly above the flooded areas
and estimate how much damage has been done
to THE PEOPLES . . . .
dear galway,
it is lonely here, and sometimes,
THE PEOPLES can be a bitch
dear galway,
i hear poems in my head
as the wind blows in your hair
and the young brown girl
with the toothpaste smile
who flows freely because she has heard OUR SOUNDS . . . .
dear galway,
OUR SONGS OF LOVE are still
murmurs among these melodies of madness . . . .
dear Galway, and what the fuck are the irish doing/
and when the IRA sends JUST ONE, just one soldier
to fight with say the American Indians, then i'll believe them . . . .
dear galway,
the river is rising here, and i am
scared and lonely . . . . . .
Mary and the children send their love
to you and yours
always
Imamu Etheridge Knight Soa
Letter to N.Y.
--Elizabeth Bishop
In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:
taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,
and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,
and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,
and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.
--Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.
--Elizabeth Bishop
In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:
taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,
and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,
and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,
and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.
--Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.
Letter to Bell from Missoula
--Richard Hugo
Dear Marvin: Months since I left broke down and sobbing
in the parking lot, grateful for the depth
of your understanding and since then I've been treated
in Seattle and I'm in control like Ghengas Khan.
That was a hairy one, the drive west, my nerves so strung
I couldn't sign a recognizable name on credit slips.
And those station attendants' looks. Until Sheridan
I took the most degenerate motels I saw because they seemed
to be where I belonged. I found my way by instinct
to bad restaurants and managed to degrade myself
in front of waitresses so dumb I damn near offered them
lessons in expressions of disdain. Now, it's all a blur.
Iowa. South Dakota. Wyoming. Lots of troublesome deja vu
in towns I'd seen or never seen before. It's snowing
in Missoula, has been off and on for days but no fierce winds
and no regrets. I'm living alone in a house I bought,
last payment due 2001. Yesterday, a religious nut
came to the door and offered me unqualified salvation
if I took a year's subscription to Essential Sun Beam.
I told him I was Taoist and he went away. Today,
a funny dog, half dachshund, waddles through my yard.
A neighbor boy, Bud, poor, shovels my walk for a dollar
and on the radio a break is predicted. A voice is saying,
periods of sun tomorrow, a high front from the coast.
For no reason, I keep remembering my first woman
and how I said afterward happy, so that's what you do.
I think of you and Dorothy. Stay healthy. Love. Dick.
The Letter
--W.H. Auden
From the very first coming down
Into a new valley with a frown
Because of the sun and a lost way,
You certainly remain: to-day
I, crouching behind a sheep-pen, heard
Travel across a sudden bird,
Cry out against the storm, and found
The year's arc a completed round
And love's worn circuit re-begun,
Endless with no dissenting turn.
Shall see, shall pass, as we have seen
The swallow on the tile, spring's green
Preliminary shiver, passed
A solitary truck, the last
Of shunting in the Autumn. But now,
To interrupt the homely brow,
Thought warmed to evening through and through
Your letter comes, speaking as you,
Speaking of much but not to come.
Nor speech is close nor fingers numb,
If love not seldom has received
An unjust answer, was deceived.
I, decent with the seasons, move
Different or with a different love,
Nor question overmuch the nod,
The stone smile of this country god
That never was more reticent,
Always afraid to say more than it meant.
Letter from an Institution
--Michael Ryan
I have a garden here, shaped
like Marienbad, remember?,
I lose myself
in, it seems. They only look for me
sometimes. I don't like my dreams.
The nurses quarrel over where I am
hiding. I hear from inside
a bush. One is crisp
& cuts; one pinches. I'd like to push
them each somewhere.
They both think it's funny
here. The laughter sounds like diesels.
I won't move because I'm lazy.
You start to like the needles.
You start to want to crazy.
A Letter from Tegucigalpa
--Mark Strand
Dear Henrietta, since you were kind enough to ask why I no longer write, I shall do my best to answer you. In the old days, my thoughts like tiny sparks would flare up in the almost dark consciousness and I would transcribe them, and page after page shone with a light that I called my own. I would sit at my desk amazed by what had just happened. And even as I watched the lights fade and my thoughts become small, meaningless memorials in the afterglow of so much promise, I was still amazed. And when they disappeared, as they inevitably did, I was ready to begin again, ready to sit in the dark for hours and wait for even a single spark, though I knew it would shed almost no light at all. What I had not realized then, but now know only too well, is that sparks carry within them the wish to be relieved of the burden of brightness. And that is why I no longer write, and why the dark is my freedom and my happiness.
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