We tell our stories in a myriad of ways–in print, over coffee, in our journals. But, there’s one venue for storytelling that is often overlooked, especially in this digital age where time and limited space might constrain our creativity: the letter.
The old-fashioned letter provided a space for communion between friends. Upon receiving a letter, one would repair to a place of solitude to read it. to allow the essence of the distant friend to fill up the space. A letter cordoned off a sanctioned area of mind, too, and allowed the lucky recipient to spend a bit of deep time conjuring up the feel of being with a friend.
~ Lia Purpura, “On Miniatures” in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction
Lucky recipient.
The feel of being with a friend.
Sounds like good reading, right?
Letters of Note is a website that recognizes the literary value in letters, posting “fascinating correspondence” from celebrities, politicians, everyday people. And more often than not, those letters tell a story. I love this recent post, “My Dear Son,” in which a father shares a bit of his own history as well as his experience in watching his son walk a similar path:
I think I had never realized before that I was getting old.
Of course I have known that my hair is causing your mother much solicitude. and that l am hopelessly wedded to my pince-nez while reading my daily paper, and at the opera; but in some incomprehensible way I had forgotten to associate these trifles with the encroachments of time. It was the sudden realization that you were about to become a Freshman in the college from which, as it seems to me, l but yesterday graduated, that “froze the genial current of my soul,” and spared you my paternal lecture.
Why, l can shut my eyes and still hear the Ivy Song, as we sang it that beautiful June morning; and yet but a few nights more and you will be locked in the deadly Rush on the same field where I triumphantly received two blackened eyes, and, l trust, gave many more!
Read the rest of the letter HERE (there’s so much more to absorb).
The Prompt
Think about the last time you received a letter. Consider what story you might tell on your own stationary. Or, even on that lined yellow paper. It doesn’t matter, the point is, tell your story. But, here’s the catch: write it in letter form. Then put it in an envelope and seal it.
Maybe you take it to your next critique group, open it, and read it there (after all, this is an essay as much as a letter). Maybe you put a stamp on it and send it right out. Whatever you decide, know that how you write the story adds to way in which it is received:
[T]he unsealing, the unfolding and smoothing out [of a letter], the squinting…the pausing, musing, smiling, the refolding and tucking back in–all of [this adds] to the physicality of reading. ~Lia Purpura
Who doesn’t love a letter?
* Photo credit: krosseel on Morguefile.com
Thanks to Paul August, who is a poet and a collector of many cool things, I came into short-term possession of a portable LP player. Because my husband is also a collector of sorts, I had no shortage of records from which to choose for the player. And, I had an audience of listeners: the writers at Harwood Place retirement center.
