OPEN ME CAREFULLY: The Epistolary Poem with Caitlin McDonnell (Zoom)

Open Me Carefully read the instructions on a folded letter Emily Dickinson wrote her beloved sister-in-law, on one of thousands that make up a body of collected work under that title. The epistolary, or letter poem, Dickinson knew, invites a special kind of opening...or peering in. All poems are intimate, but reading poems in the form of letters (whether to a part of the self, another, an abstraction),  is an act of intimate interception. Writing poems of correspondence focuses our attention in a unique and powerful way.  In this workshop, we will read and write epistolary poems that may be passionate or political in nature. We will read letter poems by Emily Dickinson, Tracy Smith, Wanda Coleman, Jessica Cuello, Zoe Ryder-White, Nicole Callihan, Richard Hugo, Diane Suess and others and write our own letter poems.

BIO:

A former Fine Arts Work Center, Yaddo, and New York Times fellow in poetry, Caitlin Grace McDonnell received her MFA from…