Dear dVersers – April has just arrived and in the Northern Hemisphere we have forwarded time as well as literally and metaphorically turned over a new leaf, so there will be longer days, and at least two seasonal spurts of growth, lit by a matchless sun (we hope).

“Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there..”

Thus wrote Robert Browning in his “Home Thoughts from Abroad” which reads to me like a letter to self, of home sickness, a longing to return.

And Anne Sexton also writes of going back though it is unclear which direction she is taking in her “Letter Written on a Ferry While Crossing Long Island Sound”

“...Now I am going back 
and I have ripped my hand 
from your hand as I said I would 
and I have made it this far 
as I said I would... 

Dearest, 
although everything has happened, 
nothing has happened. 
The sea is very old. 
The sea is the face of Mary, 
without miracles or rage 
or unusual hope,...[more]

And we too are going back, back to the epistolary/letter poetry form most recently prompted by Punam For the Love of Letters – 2023.

Within this genre there is choice for you between two styles:-

1. The Verse Epistle. A letter written in traditional poetry form of rhyme and meter often with formal language and topic and favoured by past poets from Ovid to Pope and beyond. And Matilda Bethem brings the form right up to date with her “Letter to ARC On Her Wishing to be Called Anna”

“Forgive me, if I wound your ear,
By calling of you Nancy, 
Which is the name of my sweet friend, 
The other’s but her fancy….

Nancy agrees with what we see
A being wild and airy; 
Gay as a nymph of Flora’s train, 
Fantastic as a fairy.

But Anna’s of a different kind,
A melancholy maid, 
Boasting a sentimental soul, 
In solemn pomp arrayed….”

If you are tempted by this form Sanaa’s prompt of 2021 gives us an in depth exploration with examples

OR choose

2. The Prose Poetry Epistle. A style that keeps much of the lyricism of poetry without formality of meter or rhyme patterns and still employs techniques of alliteration, repetition, etc. “Prosody 101” by Linda Pastan epitomises what prose poetry is:

“When they taught me that what mattered most 
was not the strict iambic line goose-stepping 
over the page but the variations 
in that line and the tension produced 
on the ear by the surprise of difference, 
I understood yet didn't understand 
exactly, until just now, years later 
in spring, with the trees already lacy 
and camellias blowsy with middle age, [more]

And Thomas James’ “Letters to a Stranger” is a brilliant exemplar both in its poetic prose and letter writing style, where even the 6 stanzas I imagine to be numbered pages:

I

In April we will pierce his body. 
It is March. Snow is dust over the branches. 
A pony hunches in the orchard. 
I stand at the frozen mouth of the river, 
Thinking of you…
In the house where you live 
Frost glitters on the windows 
Like uncounted pieces of silver. 
Already they are preparing the wine and the bread...

III

Alexander died this morning, 
Leaving his worldly possessions 
To the strongest. 
I watched an empire fade across his lips. 
They propped him in the sun a while, 
And then three women came to scour his body 
Like a continent. [read in full here]

Poetry Suggestions: Entitle and/or address your letter (directly or indirectly) to self, to friend or foe, family or stranger, someone dead or living, to a pet or even an abstraction but remember that “the letter poem is never addressed to just its recipient; it is always meant to be overheard by a third person, a future reader.” The Epistolary Poem

Need more ideas? – see “learning the epistolary poem“

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