I got this book at a local Savers thrift shop. I've enjoyed many epistolary novels but hadn't come across a collection of epistolary poems before! This one's grouped into "Sent" and "Received," according to the perspective of each poem, and features a mix of very personal entries, political ones, and some on the surreal side. Among my favorites:

"To the Captain of the Pequod" by Susan Rooke, a poignant view of Ahab's home life from the viewpoint of his wife, trying to remain calm while imagining what might be happening to him:

"...I have
received your letters, but
with miles and months between.
Lacking news, I must invent my own."

And in a more modern vein, "Letter to Kyle in Michigan" by Gary Metras, from a man thanking Kyle for the book he'd given him, which he wound up taking on a plane flight - and, eventually, writing the letter inside on the blank pages at the end, as his blank book was in a bag in the overhead compartment, and:

"...I wanted to get these words on paper
right away before landing where they
would've evaporated the way in-cloud rain
never touches the ground, or how the quietness
inside the plane erupts into activity
when we land, and thought then becomes
impossible in that frenzy, so I wrote right
in your book..."

Then there are the fragments from the past in Sarah Webb's "At the Ruins of the Roman Camp," and the intriguing "Shopping List: A Stolen Poem" by Judith Toler, and, on the "received" side, someone receiving their first information about their birth parents in Cindy Wolfe Boynton's "Delivery". And Neal Whitman's "Poetry for Sale" is about the online sale of one of Emily Dickinson's poems, from the many she mailed, hand-written, to Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

I'm adding this book to the DUETS bookbox (bookbox journal here), as part of an "epistolary format" duet.

Releasing for the DUETS bookbox, category "Epistolary book"

This book is continuing in the Duets bookbox in a pairing of Epistolary books. Its partner book is 84, Charing Cross Road.

This book arrived in my DUETS Bookbox.......poetry is not my usual genre, but this one looks interesting. Added to my TBR shelf.