We all love to receive a letter (or an email, or a text) from a good friend. Epistolary poems are just that: direct addresses to a lover, a family member, an animal, even a sworn enemy. The form dates back to the verse letters of the Roman Empire, where it was popularized by Horace and Ovid. Ever since, poets have used the form to write elegies, love notes, political invectives, philosophical inquiries, and more. Here are ten poems that showcase what poetry can do when it’s addressed to a specific audience. As always, all are free to download.
“Dear Mr. Bill,” Yusef Komunyakaa
With narrative and imagistic precision, the speaker in Komunyakaa’s poem addresses Bill Traylor, a self-taught folk artist who was born enslaved on an Alabama plantation and who, at the age of 82, began “drawing reveries on scraps / of yellow cardboard.” The result is a vivid portrait of a man and his art, filled with both stark observations and questions that go unanswered.
“Dear P.,” Victoria Chang
“Dear P.” is part of a series of epistolary poems Chang wrote to her children. In this excerpt of two linked sonnets, the speaker reflects on the role of accident in both poetry and parenthood, observing “how / much accident even in planning” before arriving at a declaration of love and wonder: “It’s this / baby I want. This one that sucks in love / and breathes out fire like a magician.”
“Gretel, From a Sudden Clearing,” Marie Howe
Howe writes from the point of view of Gretel in the classic fairy tale, addressing her brother Hansel. “I remember you before you became / a story,” she tells him, having lost him both to the woods and to mythology. While the poem is steeped in grief, she insists in the final lines, “every day, I am less / and less afraid.”
“Letter to a Cockroach, Now Dead and Mixed into a Bar of Chocolate,” Matthew Olzmann
“Nothing harbors a secret like sweetness,” the speaker in Olzmann’s poem says to a dead cockroach that’s been pulverized and mixed into a chocolate bar. The poem addresses this secret head-on, ultimately conceding to the insect that sweetness “…has a price. You are the price.”
“Myth,” Natasha Trethewey
Borrowing from Greek mythology, Trethewey explores loss in the wake of her mother’s death. The poem is a palindrome, the first nine lines exactly mirroring the last, emphasizing the cyclical, non-linear nature of grief.
“from Jason the Sailor,” Diane Wakoski
Wakoski is known for her intensely personal, often diaristic poems that combine memorable imagery and myth with conversational prose. This excerpt from “Jason the Sailor” is a prime example, opening with a letter to a friend that lays the symbolic and emotional groundwork for the poem that follows.
“The City in Which I Love You,” Li-Young Lee
Writing to an unnamed “you,” the speaker in Li-Young Lee’s poem wanders through “a city I call home, in which I am a guest,” filled with “derelict rooms” and “scrawny fires that must eat.” The result is a poem of intense longing, in which “my most excellent song goes unanswered.”
“Letter to Zephyr,” Kazim Ali
Ali writes from the point of view of Hyacinth, a Spartan prince, addressing the god of the west wind, Zephyr, who killed him in a fit of jealousy. The resulting poem is tonally complex; Hyacinth says that the “fickle” god “murdered me into music” and “brought me to flower.”
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“Letter,” Jean Valentine
Valentine is known for her associative leaps and dreamlike imagery. Her abilities are on full display in “Letter,” a poem written to an unknown recipient that begins with a simple image of a hornet and, over just 25 short lines, spirals open to “my other mouth, the mouth of my soul…”
“Letter to Haruko from Decorah, Iowa, USA,” June Jordan
“I feel very strongly that love poems constitute a political body of writing; to write them is a political act,” June Jordan once wrote. This poem is an example of such an act, addressed to a lover who appeared later in her life. It is included in her collection Haruko/Love Poems.
