Prompt: Epistle

sealed letter - via Flickr

An epistle is a letter in verse, usually addressed to a person close to the writer. They are sometimes moral and philosophical, or intimate and sentimental. It was most popular in the 18th century, but has continued to be used by poets. Alexander Pope's "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" is an example of this classic form.

Lord Byron and Robert Browning composed epistles in the 19th century. One of Byron’s is the “Epistle to Augusta,” written to his sister.

But the epistle is an ancient Roman poetic form. You might associate it with the epistles that are commonly found in the Bible, especially the New Testament.

Epistolary poems, from the Latin “epistula” for “letter," are poems that read as letters. They are poems of direct address. They are free verse, without rhyme scheme or line length considerations. They are addressed to real people, imagined people, groups of people and even to things and abstract concepts.

But poets like to break rules.  Elizabeth Bishop’s "Letter to N.Y.," uses rhyming quatrains. It begins:

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

In the past two centuries, the epistle is generally less formal and more conversational. An example is “Dear Mr. Fanelli” by Charles Bernstein.

In Hayden Carruth’s “The Afterlife: Letter to Sam Hamill,”  he addresses his epistle to a fellow poet and translator who was a friend to Carruth. Is Sam dead? Can we construct a person from our imagination?

The poem I chose this month as a model is by Jean Nordhaus. When I first read it, I immediately thought of the mail that I still receive at my home for both my mother and father, both of whom have died - my father a long time ago; my mother more recently.

Her poem, "Posthumous," begins:

Would it surprise you to learn
that years beyond your longest winter
you still get letters from your bank, your old
philanthropies, cold flakes drifting
through the mail-slot with your name?

There are many other epistles old and new to consider as examples, including "The Correspondence-School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students" by Galway Kinnell.

Our June writing prompt is to write your epistle.

Submission deadline: June 30.

Prompt: Epistles to the Poets

It is National Poetry Month 2015 in America. The Academy of American Poets has many special features on its website for this month. One is called "Dear Poet." It is a multimedia education project that invites young people in grades five through twelve to write letters in response to poems written and read by some of the award-winning poets who serve on their Board of Chancellors.

Poets Online asks you this month to join the students. You can read and watch a group of poets reading and discussing their poems. The students are being asked to write letters to the poets to express their thoughts, ideas, or ask any questions they may have about the poems. I wonder why they didn't ask students to write poems to the poets - which is what we we will do.

Epistles, or epistolary poems, comes from the Latin “epistula” for “letter," are poems that read as letters. As poems of direct address, they can be intimate and colloquial or formal and measured.

On our main site, the prompt includes two of the poems and poets from Dear Poets. One is Naomi Shihab Nye's "How Do I Know When A Poem Is Finished?" which itself is addressed to someone - perhaps a student who has asked the poet that question, though all poets ask that question to themselves.

The second example and video is for Edward Hirsch's poem "Cotton Candy" which looks back to the candy and a grandfather.

What would you write to Nye or Hirsch about their poems?

Our prompt is much wider. You can choose any poem on the Academy site or any poem at all. The only requirement is that you address the poet by name and that you include the title of the poem you are responding to in the poem.

Your poem might be titled "Dear Mr. Hirsch" or Dear Elizabeth" for a poem to Elizabeth Bishop, whose own epistle "Letter to N.Y." begins:

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

I might write to W. B. Yeats during this Easter week 2015 about his poem "Easter 1916" to let him know that this year:

I am sitting at the start of day
looking out the window
at my desk at a sky gray
above twenty-first century homes

that I have passed on my way,
like you, nodding and saying
polite meaningless words...