Dear Whomever It May Concern

At the core of it, letter poetry is just a poem that you write as if it were a letter to someone (or, in some cases, something). Inspiration for this type of poem can be easily found--you can write a letter to your mother or to a sibling or friend or enemy--however, I think what can be difficult about this poem is being able to control the poem and not let it fall into the purely letter category. Poems aren't just a short piece of writing. Imagery, metaphors, syntax, line breaks, etc. are all things you have to consider. A letter may not have the beautiful language or rhythm that a poem would normally have. During this week I certainly struggled with the reigning in of my letter poems.

In one poem I wrote to an old roommate who had recently scorned me. Because I had a lot of unresolved feelings towards this person, the letter started out as a poem and then quickly turned into a rant of all the things that I wish I could say to them. About halfway through the poem I tried to shift back into the poetical side by throwing in some refined language, but by doing this all I did was create a discourse between the rant-y part of the poem and the poetic part of the poem. This specific poem to my ex-roommate was actually on my mind last week and the concept was the reason I wanted to do letter poetry this week. I really wanted to have this idea blossom and spark a week of good poetry, but alas, writing is not so easy as what we wish it to be.

The same thing happened to me when I wrote to my mother. The letter turned into something that you might find on a note just after running away to a foreign country for a gap year. In fact, the best poem that I wrote this week would be the letter I wrote to "secrets", not to an actual person. I think, perhaps, because the concept was more abstract, I could distance myself a little from the piece and not have my emotions overwhelm what I was writing. Though, I will say that the other two poems I mentioned were very cathartic and after getting all the initial emotion out there, I can perhaps try the poems again and given them a more poetic feel.

Thanks for reading and please, come back next week where I will be reporting on pastoral poetry.

#poetry #letters