Letters between Poets

  Photo credit: Carl Van Vechten, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_Moore

Recently, I have been reading the letters of Marianne Moore. I am not a huge Marianne Moore fan. Yes, I know for some this will be a heresy. I find Moore in her poetry to be priggish. I was rereading some essays by Maxine Kumin, however, and Kumin raved about the Moore letters. Kumin’s recommendation and the ability to procure the letters inexpensively landed the book on my nightstand. When I am too tired to read a novel, I dip in and read a few letters from Moore. And I find her enchanting. Yes, the priggish Moore I knew through the poems becomes human, interesting, vulnerable, smart, witty, and deeply engaged in the world in her letters. What a delight.

This experience is part of why I love reading letters: letters remake people with a more humanity. Moore has a great correspondence with HD and Bryher–and I am sure there are others I will discover as I wend my way through the thick volume.

Letters also remind me of the daily-ness of life. Reading collections of poetry, for example, I am often left to marvel at the brilliance which creates such finely formed poems, at the mind and eye that put the poems together so artfully into a fully collection. Letters fill in the blanks. They show the daily-ness of life. The inevitable insecurities. The mundane things all people do routinely. Letters are human; poems divine. I love them both.

I love the letters of Elizabeth Bishop (there are many volumes; all are excellent), the beautiful brief correspondence between Leslie Marmon Silko and James Wright before Wright’s death (though if you get it, look for the earlier yellow cover; I prefer it. I think you will, too.), and the collection of letters exchanged between Denise Levertov and Robert Duncan, while a doorstop, is moving and worth the weight.

I also love letters because writing letters is part of my daily writing practice. In the course of a year, I probably send over 365 letters through the mail. I correspond regularly via mail with a few friends. I write letters in response to letter that people send me as the editor of Sinister Wisdom. I write letters of love and admiration to writers. Letter writing is an intellectual practice and a personal passion.

I am working on editing a letter exchange of some notable poets (more about that later, perhaps this summer, perhaps in the fall), and I hope to live long enough to read published letters of Adrienne Rich and Marilyn Hacker. There is also a trove of letters from Barbara Grier that would be a gripping collection. Whose letters do you love? Whose letters need to be edited, collected, and published? To whom are you writing a letter today?

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