The letter is one of the oldest forms of nonfiction rumination... it can be intensely private, filled with personal references that make the reader feel as if one is overhearing an intimate conversation replete with codewords and shorthand. Letters like this are mysterious and poetic and obscure as much as they reveal. Other letters feel like "open letters" --meant to be consumed by a larger audience than their single addressee (or kept for posterity... enlarging their audience through repeated readings... one person becoming several through different ages).
What letters share is that they are focused into their shape by consideration of the needs of their receiver. What does my son/daughter need to know about the world? How can I show my friend that my love for them goes deeper than they imagine?
If you haven't read it yet, Anne Bradstreet's letter to her son Simon--in its aphoristic delivery--is a type of sifting through life experience to find useful tenets that will serve him. The jump from subject to subject is telling of her selection-- (What can a *mother* give a son in the 17th century as advice?... what spheres do they share?... knowledge of people and how they work, mostly)
p. 9-14 in your book
Ta-Nehisi Coates's Letter to His Son (excerpted here is a *long* section from the book of the same name... give yourself the time to read the entirety of it... it is both painful and stunning) is focused by his distillation of personal and national history into a revelation for his child. The last sentence brought me to tears when I first read it. This excerpt is long for this class... but important. Search for the through-line, the returned-to refrain. The body.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/tanehisi-coates-between-the-world-and-me/397619/
Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet (1903-8... translated from the German...read the first... but then as many as you wish for your own comfort) is an answer to a stranger's (an aspiring writer's) request for mentorship. Also advice, but delivered conversationally, with the intention of bolstering the artistic will.
Emily Dickinson's Master Letters (mid-1800s) are a different beast altogether... passionate and poetic outpourings of emotion to a friend or would-be lover or to God (a literary mystery even today)... they speak volumes about her (she refers to herself sometimes as Daisy in them)... the recipient's characteristics are less clear--but her emotional ferocity is palpable.
p. 221-24
Finally--this open letter shows the epistle-form's capacity for humor. (I will always try to show a form's ability to perform several functions). McSweeney's publishes open letters to odd entities... if you like, nose around on the site.
Your assignment-- Write a letter about something you care deeply about. I suggest you address the letter to someone/something larger than the present moment (a future or past self... a descendant years from now... a relative or friend who has passed... a deity... a dream... the sun, moon, or stars) but that is not a requirement. The only requirement is that the subject matter be a crucial one to you and that your 500-750 words be focused through your thinking about/toward/for the addressee. You can tell a story in the letter (Nehisi tells several) or not, but ask yourself what "change" you are going for in this piece... (the piece will necessarily serve double-duty by *seeming* private in its format but *being* public as a production of this class, written to be shared beyond its addressee as well as *to* them... social media should have you familiar with this conundrum). As always--email with any questions.
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