DELIVER US, SEND US: LET’S HEAR IT FOR LETTERS, “JOY OF EARTH/DENIED THE GODS,†IN POETRY INSPIRING A RESURGENCE OF LETTER WRITING (YOU KNOW YOU NEED TO GIVE AND TO RECEIVE), considering Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Derek Walcott, Charlotte Bronte, Mary Oliver, Maud Gonne (re: W.B. Yeats), Paul Dunbar, James Joyce . . . This might not be the most complicated sciency or poetic dynamics Poetry Slow Down, but it may well be your favorite. It may lead to your sitting right down to write yourself a letter, truly *yours*-elf, or writing someone else a letter, and who knows, saving a life, perhaps your own, as the poets say—Mary Oliver’s “the only life you can save.†We’ll listen to the music of writing letters of Billy Williams, the Marvelettes, Robert Plant and Alison Krause, Joe Cocker, Simon and Garfunkle, and Sam Cooke. You’re joining me, Professor Barbara Mossberg, for our Poetry Slow Down, the news we need, the news we heed, the news “without which men die miserably every day,†and oh yes, on that note, of course, the refrigerator door letter of William Carlos Williams, my response in Wave Particle Theory, and Alexander Pope, Charles Olsen, Gertrude Stein, Rilke, Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, Donald Hall, Sandra Gilbert, D.H. Lawrence, Charles Tripi, and more. Because you know, Poetry Slow Down, you send me, and I’m sending it right back to you. Send! Post!
Sincerely,
Professor Barbara Mossberg
© Barbara Mossberg 2013
