The Art of the Letter

Before we had telephones and cell phone text messaging, before we had personal computers with easy access to email and live chats, letter writing was essential ~ it was how we communicated everything important in our lives to those who were somewhere other than shouting distance.  Now we disparage "snail mail" as if it were akin to the Pony Express, archaic and obsolete.  But isn't there still value in the writing of letters, and in receiving them?

To write a letter, you must think about content.  What is worth writing about?  What do you care about, and what will your reader want to know?  The very act of contemplating such things is meditative and enlightening.  Letter writing seems to take us back to simpler times, said my friend Melvin, whose wonderful letters kept me encouraged and entertained during the five weeks I spent helping Mom through chemotherapy earlier this year.

The children's book The Jolly Postman by Janet and Allan Ahlberg captures another exciting aspect of letters: the anticipation of wondering what's inside the envelope, and the fun of removing the letter from its paper sleeve.

Published by Little, Brown and Co., Boston and Toronto, 1986

The story is told through letters to assorted fairy tale characters, tucked into envelopes on each page of the book.  Thank you, Ahlbergs, for reminding children that letters are to be held in our hands.  For me, holding a letter is like reading a book, with pages that beg to be turned ~ infinitely more satisfying than an electronic device can ever be.  And a tangible letter, written or typed on paper and delivered in an envelope, can be read and reread, savored and saved. 

When composing a letter, we can play with voice ~ who we are writing to determines style.  My high school friend Amy Bodian and I had a twenty-year correspondence, and her letters were exuberant, irreverent and often written in rhyme, creating words as needed a la Dr. Seuss.  She knew that I would love that.  When she died at 38 of lung cancer (a non-smoker), she left me with a cherished collection of her creative, art-filled letters.  Here's an excerpt from one, circa 1985:

     I'd like to be a fertile luscious swamp and meadow,
     flowers and bull rushes in my shadow,
     I'd like to be full of color and sound and
     to hear the water all around me resound.
     I'd like the emptiness to fill with swampy dew
     and then I'd like to sip a Mint Julep with you.
     I hope this note has found you happy at holiday time
     in your letter you sounded sublime.
     Keep me in touch without a hush,
     let us not forsake what is always ours to take:
     eternal friendship, a glowing light
     that sets us forever apart
     from those seen as passing ships only in the night. 
     Merry Xmas, happy new year,
     & may this one be the brightest of bright.  Love,
     A.B. Sleeptight