And if you’d like to become a member of the Poetry Book Club–we’re talking about Rowan Ricardo Phillips’s collection The Ground right now–click here.

Related Posts:

• Happy Birthday Tracy K. Smith!
• The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Interviews Tracy K. Smith
• The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat 20 – Carmen Giménez Smith
• The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Linda Hogan
• Celebrate Poetry (Tonight!)

A month ago we announced Letters To Each Other, which allowed subscribers to Letters In The Mail to send a one page letter and SASE. We would copy the letters and send each writers six letters back in their self addressed stamped envelope. We asked the letter writers to send their letters to Karen’s house. 296 people participated and last night we had a party in a bar where we stuffed all the envelopes and mailed the letters. But first Karen read them all.

***

Dear letter writers,

You have been coming to my house for weeks now, in trickles at first and then in floods as the deadline got closer. My mailman must be so confused; it’s been all Cooking Light and utility bills until now.

I took the first five of you to a coffee shop, and I fell in love with you at once.  You were raw, and it all felt a little sacred, getting a little piece of you sent so hopefully, two pages or less.  I couldn’t stop thinking about you all week.

I don’t know if it’s just that you were my first loves, but the first five of you were my favorites.

And then more of you showed up, 296 of you, and I found myself wanting to cherry pick six letters to “receive,” just so I could have you as a pen pal; Mr. Wales, guy from Tennessee, lady from Portland.  But then it didn’t feel right, like hand picking kids in gym class for a dodgeball team; my team of pen pals.  So, instead, I thought I’d write to all of you.

I want to tell you a few things; things about each other, things about what you 296 decided to tell six perfect strangers.

Many of your letters were about letter writing; about the last time you wrote a letter, about the state of civilization because people don’t write letters anymore. There were some breakups in the bunch; some recent, some long rotting.  Lots of illustrations, job dissatisfaction, loneliness.  Many Seinfeld letters; letters about nothing in particular – a subway ride, the weather, doing your laundry.  And a lot of meta-commentary, self-conscious “I bet you think this letter sucks” kind of comments.  Hey, Wisconsin, your letter didn’t suck.  In fact, it was one of my favorites.

There were letters clearly plotted, and others that meandered to their finish, down one side street and then the other, often surprised when you reached your destination, commenting that you didn’t know where you were going when you started.  A lot of extra notes tucked into your envelopes thanking The Rumpus for doing this (you are so welcome, the pleasure is truly all ours).

About ten percent of you poured your hearts out; and I’d like to give you 10% a hug, a big, big hug.

And then there were those of you whispered.  You started out all Seinfeld-like, and then, somewhere between how much you hate your job and love your dog, you said something really deep.  You seemed to sit somewhere between wanting to say it and being afraid that if you said it too loudly you might not get a letter back – so you whispered it.

And what I’m saying to you who are reading those letters is – listen. You’ll hear it.

He will tell you about his girlfriend’s late night shifts and how he doesn’t like to be home alone.  And then he’ll whisper, this is because his mom had clinical depression when he was growing up and she slept all the time, sometimes for months.  And then he’s back talking about his job.  And it will stop you.  And you will know that’s why he wrote this letter.

You’ll be reading about his grandma, a second-grade teacher with a basement lined with books.  And then he’ll say, as if in parentheses, that this served as his refuge from childhood trauma that his grandmother knew nothing about.  And then, just as quickly, he’ll move on to the weather.  And for a moment you won’t breathe.

She will be talking about a trip to Texas to visit a daughter and casually mention that her family moved 80 times growing up because her father was a criminal (and sometimes they just didn’t take their things with them).  And within a matter of words she will move on to tell you about her college experience.

Listen, okay?

Most of all, what you said is that you want someone to write back.  I don’t know if we allow all caps here at The Rumpus, but if we do I would say PLEASE WRITE EACH OTHER BACK.  Please.

But if your hoped for pen pal doesn’t write, I want you to know that Stephan in Kansas works the night shift, and Susannah has a husband with dementia to take care of, and Jeff, he hasn’t been able to get out of bed in months.  So, what I’m saying is that, if you don’t get a response, it probably isn’t you; your letter was fine.

***

Letter Stuffing Party in San Francisco

I told myself I would go to bed on time tonight; but I couldn’t stop reading your letters.  They seemed so much more important than sleep.

You are from everywhere – I mean everywhere, most of the United States and a handful of other countries.  How did you all find out about The Rumpus?  Especially you, 76-year old grandmother who doesn’t have a computer, how did you find The Rumpus?

One of you is a proofreader for a locally owned phone book.  What is a locally owned phone book?  And how does one edit it?  I want to know.

To the social worker in Minnesota, the only advocate in your county for victims of domestic violence – $11.28 an hour; really?  I will try not to resent the politicians in your county who hired only one of you, and then put an $11.28 price tag on preventing domestic violence.

There is a letter about a Rubbermaid container in someone’s closet that made me cry; it made me miss my father, even though he’s still alive.

There are a surprising number of you from Illinois.  Not Chicago, just Illinois.  Why?

Letter writer in jail for capital murder, did you get parole or did you get transferred to the adult system?  Yours was one of the first letters I read; it took my breath away.  I hope you write that book.  I’d read it.

***

I don’t even know how to mail a letter from my house; we don’t have an outgoing mail slot in our building.  Which probably means I haven’t mailed anything since last May when I moved in.  And it means there are letters that have gone unwritten; letters I may never send, even if I can find that mailbox; letters like these.

Dear sweet girl: I love you; 16 won’t last forever.  Some day you won’t have to live with an angry man.  I need you to know it’s not you, sweetie, it’s him.

Dear dad: Every time I think about the fact that some day I will log on and not see your name in my G’chat, I wonder how does the day after look, the day after your name disappears from my G’chat?

Dear first love: Sometimes I still miss you.  We would have been miserable together.  But, still, I’ve never loved like that, and I’ve never been loved like that since.  And that worries me.  Will I ever be again?

Dear neighbors who live above me: My living room shakes every time you have sex, I mean literally shakes.  FYI, guy who’s making it shake, it’s not a race; enjoy the journey.  Don’t make me come up there and give you tips.

Dear headquarters of the religion I used to belong to: Leaving you was the hardest decision I’ve ever made.  I don’t hate you; you’ll always be part of me.  But, three years later, I’ve never been happier.

And dear you, Wales, Washington, Virginia, Australia, San Francisco, New York, Arizona, Utah, Connecticut, the UK (etc.) – thanks for stopping by.  I’ll miss you.

Love,
Karen

P.S. Write each other back, ‘kay?

P.P.S.  All the names I used in here, I made them up.  Your secret is safe with me (me and the other six people who read your letter).

LTEO in sum:

The many different ways you asked each other to write back:

• I hope that you will write me back despite the facts that I am young and self-involved and not great at letter writing.  Because the potential payoff is that we become friends which is almost magic.
• Maybe I’ll hear from strangers.  Advice? Ideas?  Thanks for listening.  Let’s keep in touch.
• Please feel welcome to write – I cannot overstress the pleasure of giving and receiving mail, especially from strangers.
• If you care to write another letter, please drop me a few lines.
• I’d love to hear back from you, and I promise I’ll write back.
• Thanks for listening / reading and feel free to write back if you want.
• I would be delighted to hear back from you!
• I hope that you enjoyed my story, and I would love to hear back from you, should you be so inspired.
• You should write me back and tell me some things.
• You fascinate me.  I can’t wait to hear all about it.
• I really would like you to write me back, so I guess I should try to be enticing in that regard
• Write to me. We can say whatever we want to.  It will be fun.

Your uncertainty about your letter:

• I feel self-conscious writing this letter, not knowing you at all.
• I’m sorry if my letter may not have been as interesting as you had hoped.
• I’m concerned that the anonymous reader of this letter has already checked out because of my yuppie drinking habits.
• I’m writing a letter to strangers… and I feel pressure to be creative, witty, intelligent and engaging.
• The above was a digression that I now question including as I’m not sure it was even that interesting to me.
• I’ll admit that part of me is nervous about what exactly to write to relative strangers.
• I am self-conscious enough to feel a bit anxious about being mocked by you; I hope you don’t do that.

A few ways you opened your letters:

• Hello Bob or Brigitte or Henry or Sally
• Dear thoughtful reader
• Dear stranger and sharer of internal abyss
• Hi reader
• Dear Rumpus Letter Reader
• Dear… um… you
• Dear you
• Dearest You
• Hello Rumpus Club Members
• Hi
• Dear LTEO subscribers
• Hey Dude Lady Dog
• Dear fellow Letters in the Mail participant
• Dear fellow earthling
• Dear mysterious stranger
• Well hi there!
• Hello out there to somebody
• Dear Fellow Rumpusite

A few ways you closed them:

• Be well
• Yours
• Yours very truly
• Stay busy and consume bitter stuff
• Sincerely
• I’ll close by saying I don’t mind weirdos, just no psychopathic ones
• Thank you for reading
• I will say good night now, dear person
• It is nice to make your acquaintance
• Sincerest warm regards to you and your loved ones
• Mwah!
• Warmth across the miles
• Yours ‘til Niagara Falls
• Yours in curiosity
• With love and respect
• Yours in the midwest
• Amor Fati
• xo

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MariNaomi is the author of the Smoke In Your Eyes comic that appears monthly on The Rumpus. She is the author and illustrator of the graphic memoir Kiss & Tell: A Romantic Resume, Ages 0 to 22 (Harper Perennial, 2011).

Here’s her website. Here’s her most recent comic.

Her letter is awesome and unlike any letter we’ve sent before.

The next letter is being written by Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott. More information on Letters In The Mail here.

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This is an edited transcript of the Poetry Book Club discussion with Linda Hogan. Every month The Rumpus Poetry Book Club hosts a discussion online with the club members and the author, and we post an edited version online as an interview. You can read the unedited discussion here. To learn how you can become a member of The Rumpus Poetry Book Club click here.

Camille: I find it interesting that we are talking about a book that is so steeped in the long now, in a sense of long history that is eternally present, but we’re having the conversation on such future-focused platforms: computers and iPads and iPods, oh my.

Mark Folse: Time is so central to this book, the anachronism,the “five hundred year wound.” It seems you were trying in fact to compress the entire history of European and and native conflict.

Camille: That wasn’t a question. A question would be how Linda created the sense of the long now in the book. What were some choices you made?

Not that I meant Mark’s point wasn’t a question, but that mine wasn’t. (In computer-land we talk over each other a lot)

Linda Hogan: The five hundred year old wound does relate to the indigenous world and the incoming Europeans. The story of Medea was on my mind for thirty years. I heard it, read it, the first time and it stayed with me as the story of a woman very much like a native worman, her father was a medicine man, although called a sorcerer back then, her aunt was a siren, if I now remember correctly. It related to myth, but it was more of a reality. It was like history here, even until the early twentieth century in Indian Territory, now Oklahoma.

Brian S: I think that’s something that lots of people don’t realize–that we’re not that far removed, historically speaking, from the Indian wars.

Camille: You say, “if I remember correctly.” That calls me to ask how steeped you felt you had to be in the “original” Medea story. What sort of research did you do? Where did your own knowledge take over?

Linda Hogan: I thought of the book first as a possible novel, then a play, but after all the years of thinking, when it finally came to a consciousness and to writing, it became a long narrative poem, the first I have ever done. But I also did see it as a stage performance. As for the Indian wars, it seems that the time is far away, but it isn’t. The Wounded Knee massacre took place when my grandmother was seven. And Native people, throughout the world, live with history as part of life in the mind, the heart, every day. We may live in modern America, hold jobs, but history is present. Time is different for us.

Brian S: It certainly works as a monologue. I heard the voice speaking from the moment I started reading.

Camille: it seems that many of the horrors suggested in the book are STILL happening to people somewhere. That’s part of the long now sense I get from the book. It’s not just calling me to remember but also pay attention to what’s going on now. Was that part of your idea, Linda? I did you intend more of a memorial?

Linda Hogan: Yes, I had to read the story. And then was surprised to see that she hadn’t killed her children, which was important and made much more sense, that the kind of politics of the time would not want her children in the picture. After all, she was unlike them. My own knowledge took over when I placed it in the present, thinking of people I have known in prison, of the kind of life a woman in her situation might have lived and how she would have used knowledge of a covert nature against a new woman, etc.

Brian S: I’d never heard that part of the story either, so when I read this one, I sort of assumed that you were reinventing it a little (which I was totally cool with). But it’s very interesting to see that it was that way from the beginning, and then the story was retold to fit the politics of the time.

Mark Folse: That part of the story made perfect sense, the mob killing her children. My unfinished question: did you set out to write it anachronistically, wandering through time. It gives the poem a fabulous, mythic quality.

Linda Hogan: No, I couldn’t forget what today is like. The history is repeated for certain. We have not learned. And it is all so recent in the memory, but continuing. I find that my writing now, in the softness I would like, looks at the political, and even when I don’t wish it. Because more and more the world is revealed to us. I am, have been, more of a writer who thinks about environment, but the kind of world we are living with now seems to require that we speak the words that open it and keep it in the minds of all people. The corruption of the past lives in the present and while I would prefer to talk about trees and their plant communities, their root systems, etc. I end up in the process writing about the root system of America.

Mark Folse: Someone on our prior email list discussion noted that the trees that seems so central, and the plants as well, are only identified twice (by my count, the cedar trees and the mulberry.

Linda Hogan: Also, in the book, I think the concept of land is interesting because in the indigenous world it is something to be protected and cared for, precious being. But the problems in history have been related to the different way of looking at its use, for income, for timber, for ownership, pasture, building. Very different notions.

Mark Folse: The cedar trees in the sense of the land trying to heal itself was clear (but I’ve been reading Aldo Leopold and he has a long section about the conquest of the prairie and how the natural environment reacted, including the advance and retreat of certain trees). But why, in your mind, call out those two?

Camille: We noticed that sometimes you speak of plants and animals in the specific (cedar, chambered nautilus, flying fish) and sometimes general. We thought this might have helped you move through time and space. What went into your decisions of when to specifically name a creature or plant and when to let the general stand? I’m curious about this because I do think of you as an environmentally attentive writer.

Linda Hogan: Yes, the cedar. A special tree for the atmosphere, but considered sacred by most tribal peoples. And the mulberry I mentioned was used in many ways, including weaving. Still, the global forest, the local forests, offer us so many gifts. We are still learning how they communicate, how they open and send out moisture, preserve water, aquifers. I only mentioned those two because it would have read like a list.

Brian S: Do those trees have specific meaning to you? Are they a part of your personal history?

Linda Hogan: I think they had to do with what was easily seen and remembered, but also metaphors in the work itself. So, I was more focused on the story and how it arrived in its own ways and that took the place of the environment which had been the loss of Indios and her father and their people.

Yes, those trees are a part of my history. But so are black walnut, oak, pine, etc. I study how forests work together. Or trees that keep others away, how they need other plants near them, etc. It is just my interest. Plants and animals are beings of great interest and mystery.

Mark Folse: The lack of specificity (trees, plants, time) certainly added to the mythic quality. Now, water: I don’t think of water as a central element of Native myth or world view, but it plays a large role in the tale.

Linda Hogan: The language that is around us, the intelligences of all things is something of great interest to me. I will study whatever I can, but not always for my writing. For example, I discovered black walnut shavings might kill a horse. It made me wonder about laminitis, but also about the power of everything in this world.

Kate: This poem is written in very plain language compared to some of your other poems. Was it a process to arrive at such a narrative voice and if there was a process, did it affect the development of the poem?

Linda Hogan: Water, too. What could we live with in water. And Indios came from a world surrounded by water. But it is an important element on our land and around the continent. Yes, the language is plainer and it is because it wasn’t just a single poem but someone speaking. She is just talking to the interviewer and telling her the story. So that is how it developed and the only way it really could, being a monologue instead of a series of poems.

Camille: I loved the way you brought water and child birth together. It seemed so crucial to show a different way of looking at life, at how to nurture life. And it’s about a connection to the body and the future. Water in child labor can be such a balm. But the women Indios describes are separated from their bodies, their children. That you focused on Indios’ preferred Childbirth method (in water) seemed such a great way to cover a big idea in a small space.

Mark Folse: I agree Camille, is probably the single most powerful image of the cultural gulf.

Camille: I’d love to go back to this question of the monologue, the performance aspect of this poem. I have some ideas about why this is important, necessary, but I’d love to hear why you found it important enough to mark the performance in the title.

Brian S: I couldn’t help but compare Indios to some of the bigger movies featuring Native Americans (or their tropes)–Indios was a welcome relief, I want to point out. Do portrayals of Native Americans in popular media drive you more toward the political in your poems? I know you said you don’t aim for politics, but it’s inevitably there.

Mark Folse: The azalea bloomed on campus in January, and the magnolias are about to bloom. We live in a changed world, and the images about the The stanza on pg 17 “They cleared their own trees for cattle and now the land began to dry up and burn” seems so relevant to our little tangent.

Linda Hogan: It was considered “savage” by the people around her and yet she had an easier time of birth. Letting gravity and water work. She knew more about the body. She is a woman who lives in the body and that is very difficult to achieve in a civilized society where the mind overpowers it, keeps us out of touch. We do not find ourselves whole so much of the time. And again, it is a cultural gulf, but most of us here in America, even those of us I work with, are more involved with our work than with being conscious of our whole body self throughout the day.

Camille: Brian, while she’s typing I’ll just add that I was in Iowa City on the 15th of March and it was already 80. Plus I was in Virgina this week and already got bitten by a tick. We are living in troubling times, and I get so angry that so many of our leaders prefer to keep their heads in the sands.

Brian S: I read yesterday that there’s a chance the apple crop in New Hampshire will be irrevocably damaged because it’s been so warm that the trees started to bud and then there was a cold snap (like there usually is).

Linda Hogan: Yet, when I see the differences in how bodies move in different cultures, I can tell who lives with and without that awareness. It is visible.

Mark Folse: The phrase “walking in beauty” popped into my head as I read this, but I’m also in a class called “writing American nature” and that phrase kept popping up as well for at least a few authors (Aldo Leopold, Annie Dillard).

Linda Hogan: I actually wanted it written differently on the title. But I do see it staged, with her talking to the invisible interviewer. And I hope to find a way to do that. It reads beautifully.

Mark Folse: I was going to ask if you have given it a “staged” reading: a chair, a single spot….

Camille: Can you tell us how you would have had the title written?

Brian S: It also seems like it would set up well for a movie, with a camera, a jail cell backdrop, the chance to cut away and show scenes, etc.

Mark Folse: Actually, Brian, I think that would distract from the beautiful text.

Linda Hogan: The portrayals of Indians in films is so complex. Sometimes they work and often not. My daughter and I used to like Thunderheart. I have friends who hate it.

Camille: One of our members shared your statement that you knew that the lack of poems wasn’t what was killing the salmon, the dams were. Please speak a bit about what you think poetry and literature CAN do. Why you keep writing in addition to all the other things you do?

Mark Folse: The least political line is the one that jumped out at me. “It isn’t comfort I search for now . . . it is to change time.”

Linda Hogan: I heard a speaker at a conference compare Thoreau’s observations and timing of blooms, appearance of insects with today and the difference is great. Yes, we do know that we are living in times of change, but so many kinds of change that it is overwhelming and I think people do give up, stick their head in the sand, because it is so much easier than paying attention, or becoming active, or doing anything. Most feel so powerless to change the rush of events and information.

Mark Folse: It seemed a subtle call to action, to change the path we are on.

Linda Hogan: Walking in beauty, from the Navajo. It is something I try to think of daily and feel very good when the thought can remain.

I have only read it. It will be staged for a small audience later this year, I hope.

Brian S: And there’s also the feeling that individual action can’t really change anything. I mean, I recycle and use low energy light bulbs and walk to work instead of driving, but I often wonder how much of a difference it makes compared to industrial polluters and the like.

Mark Folse: I hope you video it. I would love to see it performed.

Brian S: Yes, absolutely. Have someone film the production.

Linda Hogan: I wanted to accent both Poem and Performance. But the editor and publisher had set it up differently and we negotiated it.

Thelma: One statement in the book that struck me as especially significant is this: “It isn’t comfort I search for now, it isn’t forgiveness. It is to change time.” Which reminds me of something Leonard Peltier has said, that you don’t do time so much as time does you. My question for you is how you deal with this sense of urgency, this notion that there is so much wrong with the world and so little time (or so it seems) in which to make a difference.

Linda Hogan: I have to write. I love to write. From the beginning of my writing life I knew it was what I want to do and I can never find the time to do enough. I often envy people who don’t have to work at jobs or who have support, but then, maybe it is the other work, etc. that keeps me going. I do think poetry and literature can make a difference in the world and I have seen it. In fact, I am packing later today to go to a zoo to give a talk and reading. They began a program because of my work. It’s hard to imagine that a poem could start a program on american wildlife but it did. And it makes me feel like I have done something worthwhile in this little brief life.

Thelma: You just answered my question–thank you.

Mark Folse: Poetry was and still is politically powerful in other nations, other cultures. It’s one of America’s great deficiencies. I’m glad to hear about the program.

Linda Hogan: Yes, in revolutions, it is the poets that are taken away. Because it speaks a truth that enters more than just the mind. It conveys a life and a life of change, of possibility, into the whole self.

Camille: Seriously, though, it seems like you had so much to talk about and reference in this book that it could easily have gotten overwhelming. Did you find yourself at some part of the drafting process realizing you had to excise or leave out any idea or tack you wish you could have included?

Linda Hogan: Yes, I always have to leave much out. And it could have been longer, but I kept it to what seemed the most significant part of the story, the events, and the telling.

Thelma: How was the editing process? Did you do most of it yourself or did you get suggestions from the publisher?

Linda Hogan: Thank you for picking this book. I know we are running out of “time” and can’t change it or go back. How often I wish we could manipulate time a little better.

Brian S: You did say, at the beginning of the chat, that it started as a novel, then became a play and finally a narrative poem. That’s certainly paring it down as you go. But what it left is essential, which is as it should be, I think.

Linda Hogan: I usually do most of the editing myself. I am very strict with my own work. Once it is on the page, there is a separation and I can part with what doesn’t work. I usually can tell intuitively.

Camille: Which zoo? I spoke/read in the fall at the Jacksonville, FL and Little Rock, AR zoos as part of a Language of Conservation program. That zoos and parks and gardens are making poetry central seems important.

Brian S: What are you working on these days?

Linda Hogan: Ciincinnati. There is a cougar program there and I will be spending time not only with animals I have lived with, written about, but speaking and reading poetry about them.

I have a new and collected coming out next year from Coffee House. And I have a novel which wants to be finished so the next one, already starting to talk, can come through. This one was put aside once for People of the Whale and the characters are here, waiting, happy when I can work, which isn’t often enough. I long for the time to write. As I think all writers do.

Camille: Speaking of running out of time, we’re getting close. Post your final questions now! Please.

Mark Folse: I had to back and find the lines (pg 44) “You’ve seen it in the zoo, the look in our eyes . . ” Our being the curious and powerful word.

Linda Hogan: Also, I am putting all of my Chickasaw materials together to be reprinted in a new shape for the tribal press which is represented by U of Oklahoma.

Mark Folse: One I like to ask where I’ve really enjoyed a book: do you or Camille want to recommend another work of your’s?

Linda Hogan: Yes, the zoo. It is a place where animals are marginal beings, not in their own lives. And they know it. It shows in the eyes. People who are marginal, as well. Living not in the world of their own making but adapting to survive.

Mark Folse: Yes, but “our” eyes, Indios’ eyes, the prison and the zoo. Just wonderful imagery.

Camille: There is so much amazing language in this book. Mark’s reference took me to “All doors have closed/ on the wilderness of my heart.”

Linda Hogan: I very much like Power, a novel, but it hasn’t received much attention. And Rounding the Human Corners, my previous poetry book has been a bit under the covers. I think because of a change in the employees of the press.

Brian S: Funny how quickly things can disappear unless there are people there to shout and point at them.

One minute left–any final questions for Linda?

Linda Hogan: Thank you. Now that you mention that line, I like it too. The person and the land are the same in this book. What is done to her is done to their land.

I appreciate your interest and thank you for choosing this book.

Brian S: Thank so much for joining us today, Linda. And for such wonderful answers.

Mark Folse: Thank you, and of course our wonder PBC board who keep choosing such amazing books.

Thelma: Thank you for speaking with us.

Camille: You have blessed us with such thoughtful responses. In Indios and in today’s conversation. Thank you, Linda, for sharing your work and time with us.

Linda Hogan: You are also welcome. There it is again, the word “time..”

Camille: Time is of the essence.

Linda Hogan: I think ours is up but I am not certain.

Camille: Yes. This is when we all say goodbye. Goodbye.

Linda Hogan: Che pesa la cho. It means, I will see you later.

Related Posts:

• The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Announces…
• Poetry Book Club News
• Happy Birthday Tracy K. Smith!
• The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat With D. A. Powell
• Why I Chose Linda Hogan’s Indios for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club

Library Journal says of it “Evocative, intriguing, and complex, this novel is as smooth as the underbelly of a deadly, furtive reptile. Mandel’s substantial fan base will rejoice; word of mouth will bring new fans on board.”

IndieBound, which put last month’s book, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild on its Indie Next List, will put The Lola Quartet atop its May list.

Publisher’s Weekly interviewed Mandel here and reviewed it here, saying it “excels as a character study that considers the slow degradation of hopes, dreams, and expectations of people who are only in their late 20s but already feel ancient.”

And from last May, Emily St. John Mandel writes about bad reviews over at The Millions.

May’s book is about to go out too–it’s Cures for Hunger, a memoir by Deni Y. Béchard. If you’d like to join the Rumpus Book Club, click here.

Related Posts:

• Emily St. John Mandel Interview
• The Rumpus Book Club Discussion 24: Emily St John Mandel
• The Rumpus Book Club Interviews Cheryl Strayed
• Lessons Not Learned
• March’s Rumpus Book Club Selection

This is an edited transcript of the book club discussion. Every month The Rumpus Book Club hosts a discussion online with the book club members and the author and we post an edited version online as an interview. You can see the unedited discussion here. To learn how you can become a member of The Rumpus Book Club click here.

***

Cheryl Strayed: Hi sweet peas!

Stephen Elliott: Hey Cheryl, Isaac, everybody!

David B: How is the book tour?

Cheryl Strayed: My book tour has been so much fun, David. Thanks for asking.

Janeen: Hello! And I have to get this out of my system, just once: SUGAR!! Yay!!

Cheryl Strayed: It’s really amazing to meet many of the people I’ve met through online through my Sugar column. Lots of them show up at the readings. Others who come have never heard of Sugar.

Hah! Janeen. You made me laugh.

Ann: Welcome. Loved the book. Connected with the journey in solitude.

Telaina: I am so excited to see you on the best-sellers lists. I did a little dance.

Cheryl Strayed: Thanks, Ann! Telaina, I’m stunned about the bestseller lists. And grateful too.

David B: Did your toe nails heal?

Cheryl Strayed: David B, my toe nails did in fact heal. It took a few years for them to grow back, but they did.

Telaina: How are the kids handling you being gone? Or are they coming with?

Cheryl Strayed: Telaina, it’s been a challenge for my family that I’ve been gone so much lately (and also very busy before I was gone), but we’re doing okay. I talked to my kids about it a lot, trying to prepare them, but we all really miss each other.

Betsy: What caliber weapon did you use to shoot that horse?

Isaac Fitzgerald: We’re jumping right to the horse? 6:01 and we’re doing the horse. Heavy.

Stephen Elliott: That is definitely the quickest we’ve ever gotten to the horse.

Cheryl Strayed: The horse. Oh dear.

David B: The horse scene still haunts me.

Cheryl Strayed: Did I not write the caliber in the book? It was in there in one version. (Paging through my book now….)

The thing about the killing my mom’s horse is that it went terribly wrong even though nothing actually went wrong. My brother shot her exactly where and how he was meant to. It was that I had a different, tidier idea of how it would be to kill an animal. Things up close are usually more beautiful or more horrible than we imagine.

Brian: Hi Cheryl! Like the PCT, also tidier in the abstract.

Cheryl Strayed: Exactly, Brian. Like the PCT. Tidier in the abstract. Killing Lady is the hardest thing I’ve ever done and writing that scene was very painful for me.

Eileen: Did any of your family members read the manuscript before you submitted it for publication?

Cheryl Strayed: Eileen, I did not send it to any of my family members to read to grant me permission or anything, but I did give my brother an advanced reading copy. He loved the book and was deeply moved by it. After he read it, we had a very important conversation that I will never forget.

Telaina: I wondered about your family also… The unwillingness and/or hardness of being with a terminally ill person… I know everyone was doing the best they could but it just seems like such a cop-out to say “I can’t bear to see her like this.

Cheryl Strayed: That was hard for me for a long time, Telaina, but in writing about these things I’ve found forgiveness.

Frances: Today is my mother’s 93rd birthday and I was telling her about the book. We discussed the unfairness of life. I am much older than your mother was and my mother is still alive and functional.

Cheryl Strayed: Happy birthday to your mom, Frances. How wonderful! Thank you for your kindness. I’m sorry my mom died so young, but I am so lucky she was my mom.

Ellen Feig: Wondering about the issue of memory, i.e. when you write about events that happened years previous – how much is based on diary/journals an how much is based on perception?

Cheryl Strayed: I kept a very detailed journal, Eileen, so that was helpful in the writing, but I also relied on memory. I write a lot about my life and I have a good memory, so it’s a muscle I’ve worked a lot (the more you work on remembering, the more you remember). I also talked to others who I met on the PCT and asked them to share their memories of our time together.

Betsy: Did you anticipate the success of the book or can that kind of thing just not be anticipated?

Lisa S.: I was wondering that, too, Betsy. Seems like this book has really exploded. Did you see that coming?

Cheryl Strayed: That kind of thing cannot be anticipated. This would be the same book if 12 people read it or 200,000. I wrote the book I wanted to write. The rest is very much outside of me. I’m really amazed and pleased that so many people are interested in reading it.

Chris: As a parent did you struggle with writing something so revealing that your children will eventually read? I’ve always been honest with my kids but in small doses. You laid it all out there. That would be a struggle for me.

Cheryl Strayed: Chris, I think my kids will read the book when they are adults. I don’t talk to them about many of the things I wrote about in WILD (or in the Sugar column), but I think someday they will come to it on their own.

Eileen: Why did you wait so long to write it? How would it have been different if you had written it closer to the events?

Cheryl Strayed: It took me a while to write it because it took me a while to become a writer who could write a memoir. I needed to write TORCH first. That was the book that was bursting to come out of me. Then I had two kids. Life is full. I wasn’t ready to tell the story until now. I think it would be a lesser book if I’d written it earlier.

David B: I just read Torch and loved it.

Lisa S.: Agreed with David B. about Torch. One of my favorite recent discoveries.

Roxane G: Torch is one of my favorite books.

Cheryl Strayed: Thank you for all the sweet words about TORCH. That means a lot to me.

Molly: Cheryl, when you were writing this, what about your story did you hope could help others? Or was the meaning of writing it something else entirely, and if so, what drove you to do this?

Cheryl Strayed: Molly, I wasn’t ever thinking of writing it to help others. I just wrote it really out of a sense of wanting to tell a story that felt true in the biggest possible way. I wanted to excavate everything I could about that time in my life, that journey.

Molly: Thanks. Can you explain more about that feeling about wanting to tell a true story in a big way?

Cheryl Strayed: I guess what I mean is I just really wanted to write the best thing I could write about this long hike I took. So I went in with everything I could. I tried to be honest and real, to write even the things that made me wince, to create something that made me feel more human by creating it.

Molly: Something that made you feel more human by creating it. Thanks Cheryl. That nails it for me. Thanks for the book it hit me at a time I needed it. Shockingly so, in fact.

Betsy: I so wish I could figure out what “being honest” means in writing about yourself. Don’t try to answer; I just wish I understood it.

Cheryl Strayed: Being honest in writing [...] Stephen has a great way of explaining it. It involves a genuine willingness to grapple with ones own uncertainties, flaws, strengths, fears, wishes. When a writer is honest he/she does not know exactly where the story will land.

Jen A: Hi Cheryl – Thanks for writing a phenomenal book [...] The girl I’ve mentored for 10 years is now almost 22. The book inspired me to have a serious conversation with her about living each day to its fullest (your mom’s approach to life) and working toward independence because you always need to be able to count on yourself.

Cheryl Strayed: Thank you, Jen A. I do believe we all must be responsible for ourselves. And we also must all help each other. Both. Hardcore.

Betsy: A few of us during the discussions wondered how you got involved with heroin and didn’t get hooked. It seemed so easy, I almost want to try it. I’m kidding.

Cheryl Strayed: There is this funny thing in our culture where we equate using drugs with addiction. I was not a heroin addict, but I was on my way there for sure. I pulled myself out at just the right time. It was compelling, destructive, and confusing as hell. I got sucked in, but not addicted… I was a dabbler.

Telaina: The part where you didn’t have any money until the next box? I soooo wanted to reach back in time and buy you a cheeseburger…

Cheryl Strayed: Hah! You can buy me a cheeseburger now, T.

Janeen: I was really moved by the family stories, your childhood, your mom. The hike was fun and interesting, but I liked the way it gave you the excuse to talk about your family.

Cheryl Strayed: It was so tricky to write about my family. It’s easy to tell the happy stories. The not so happy ones were more difficult. I wanted to protect those I wrote about.

Janeen: Yes, that makes sense that you’d want to show your family in a good light. But we all relate to the non-perfect family stuff so well. We all want to know other families are messed up like ours are.

Denise Lanier: I was fascinated with the way the “violence” & danger of hiking the PCT – blisters, bruises, exhaustion, too hot/too cold, bloodied toenails, injuries worn over so many times that callouses formed, some near misses with snakes & bears & human feral-kind, periods of being lost – mirrored in a way the violence your mother suffered at the hands of your father. There’s something there, a kind of echo . . .

Cheryl Strayed: Denise, that’s interesting. To me the echo was more in the relationship to physical versus emotional suffering. One helped mellow the other in my experience.

James Wade: Editing this book must have been extremely difficult. I feel like every event and situation that lead up to the hike could have been a book in it’s own right. You somehow managed to find a great balance.

Cheryl Strayed: James, you are right. I could write another memoir about my 20s and not talk about my hike. In fact, I sort of have in the Dear Sugar columns.

Isaac Fitzgerald: “Tiny Beautiful Things” Coming this Summer! Look for it People (sorry, can’t help myself).

Betsy: Is Tiny Beautiful Things the compilation of Dear Sugar columns?

Stephen Elliott: Yes.

Isaac Fitzgerald: Some unpublished. (I think.)

Cheryl Strayed: You’re right, Isaac. Some are original to the book. TBT!

Janeen: Will you continue being Sugar?

Cheryl Strayed: I will continue being Sugar. I miss writing the column. It’s only that I’ve been so utterly slammed in all of this swirl around WILD, and traveling on my book tour. I will be back with a column as soon as I can–late April or early May for sure.

Stephen Elliott: Sugar’s for life. Blood in, blood out.

Cheryl Strayed: Blood in, blood out. I love it.

Jack W.: Mary Karr was a writing instructor for you, correct? She is quite a distinguished memoirist in her own regard — can you explain her influence, if any, in the writing of Wild (and/or Torch)?

Cheryl Strayed: Jack, Mary was not my teacher. She taught at Syracuse, but she teaches poetry so I didn’t work with her. I admire her memoirs, especially Lit, and have learned from her by reading her work.

George Saunders, Arthur Flowers and Mary Caponegro were my teachers and mentors when I was in grad school. Mary Gaitskill was my thesis advisor.

Janine: Cheryl, you were alongside Christopher Boucher at Syracuse, weren’t you? We read How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive and I adored it.

Cheryl Strayed: Janine, Chris Boucher and I were grad school mates. I love him. I read that VW book in class.

Janine: & Kristin Kaschock! (I think I spelled her last name wrong.)

…and Salvador Plascencia! What on earth was in the water at Syracuse? Can I have some?

Cheryl Strayed: I love Salvador Plascencia. I had dinner with him in LA last week.

Jen A: I remember you packed a fancy pants camera in The Beast… Did you end up taking any pictures while you were on the trail? I ask because your journaling was so vivid that you really didn’t need photos…

Cheryl Strayed: Jen A, I didn’t take many pictures. It’s silly, but true. You can see the ones I did take on the book trailer for WILD (on YouTube or my web site).

Ellen Feig: Jennifer Egan spoke to my students a month ago and she told them that she writes longhand daily for 2 hours and then puts her writing away for two months. Two months later she revises. What is your writing process?

Cheryl Strayed: My writing process: write whenever the fuck I can.

Telaina: Can I share Cheryl’s “I write whenever the fuck I can” on facebook? Is that legal?

Cheryl Strayed: Yes, Telaina. I don’t know if it’s legal, but I say yes.

Telaina: I just shared the shit out of Cheryl’s comment. It was fun.

Stephen Elliott: Share Like A Motherfucker. That’s our next mug.

Cheryl Strayed: Share like a Motherfucker, indeed.

Janeen: Are you still in touch with Paul? As a divorced person, I related so well to that relationship and all the complications and good things.

Cheryl Strayed: Janeen, my ex-husband, who I call “Paul” in the book, ended on good terms and we remained active friends for a few years after our divorce. We have not been in contact for about a decade, but not because there had been a falling out. It was more like life moved on. He emailed me last week to say he’d read WILD and that he loved it and he was happy for its success. He thanked me for writing about our relationship the way I did. I was unspeakably touched and grateful for this.

David B: Do you think WILD will lead to travel writing books?

Cheryl Strayed: David, do you mean will this book lead me to write travel books? I don’t know. I started writing a novel last year. I’m about sixty pages in, but I had to set it aside because I’m too busy. Same with this long essay I’ve been halfway working on for ages (by long I mean it’s about 50 pages already and I’m only a third of the way through). I need to get through promoting these two books–WILD and TBT–and then I plan to catch my breath before deciding what next.

Janeen: Do you ever write poetry?

Cheryl Strayed: I wrote poetry when I was a teenager. I’m digging through my files for some now….

Roxane G: Do you find that people make assumptions about what they “know” about you now that they’ve read your memoir? How do you handle that?

Cheryl Strayed: Yes, Roxane, I do find that. Or they fill in gaps for themselves if I didn’t write about something. But mostly I have been met with kindness and generosity. A lot of people relate to the story, but they relate on so many different ways. There are an amazing number of people out there who’ve lost their moms. They cry when they meet me. There are people who are into the hiking aspect, or the divorce/heartbreak thing. It’s wonderful to feel connected to people because of a book, but intense too.

Jack W.: Cheryl, w/r/t Torch & Wild: the events run strikingly parallel (in beautiful ways), especially both chapters 1. Some write to Calm The Mind By Writing Emotively Towards Alleviation. Did writing about similar events in both books (more directly in Wild) help in this way?

Cheryl Strayed: Jack, I do think writing about my mom’s death in both books (and in other things too–essays and the Sugar column) has been healing. I write what I feel driven to write. That keeps coming up. I might have it out of my system now, but who knows.

Holly: Cheryl, any favorite memoirs or memoirists’ structures you had in mind when writing this?

Cheryl Strayed: Hi Holly, I didn’t have anyone or any book in mind when I structured WILD, but I certainly had all the books I’ve ever read floating around in me when I wrote it. The fact that I could hang the narrative on this hike told in chronology was really helpful. The backstory came pretty organically and out of chronology. The hike provided forward momentum.

David B: How do you feel about a movie of WILD?

Cheryl Strayed: On Wild the movie if it happens: I can’t wait to see it. But it feels separate from me. The book is mine. The movie is someone else’s creation.

Ellen Feig: So dream actress to play you in the film?

Cheryl Strayed: Ellen, Reese Witherspoon has optioned the book. She plans to star in it playing me, so she is my dream actress. She’s great.

Jack W.: Do you plan to write about Vogue’s picture of you?

Cheryl Strayed: I do think I will write about Vogue’s picture of me. In fact, I will do it here. They photoshopped the shit out of me. It seems they were hoping to make me look more conventionally attractive, but they only made me look worse. I’m very disappointed and disheartened.

Stephen Elliott: They can’t make you look more attractive. Can’t be done.

Cheryl Strayed: I love Stephen Elliott.

Lisa S.: I have to say this book has inspired a lot of conversations amongst my friends about how long we could last on the PCT (which is not something I ever expected to debate). The consensus is three days. But we’d all want to go longer so we could leave notes at the checkpoints. Because it is awesome that that exists.

Cheryl Strayed: Lisa, that’s funny. I met this woman today whose daughter went out alone to hike on the PCT. She began near the Oregon border. She lasted three days! She never went back.

Janine: Wild has spurred conversations and debate in my life about females going hiking solo.

Cheryl Strayed: I think that women doing things alone is good for women and for all of us. If we continue to believe the narrative about being prey, we will always be prey. Having said that, I understand entirely that my journey would have meant something different if I had been victimized in some way (raped or killed) or if something else bad had happened. It would not have been “what a great trek!” it would have been “what was she thinking?”

Betsy: I confess I did a “what was she thinking” cuz you went out with only a whistle for protection.

Telaina: The issue is why can’t women travel alone? I don’t like that this stuff dictates what women “should” and “shouldn’t” do.

Roxane G: Seriously. The issue is, why can’t predators leave women alone, not women shouldn’t travel alone. It’s not 1850.

Betsy: But on a hike, some of it is safety. Do all avid hikers hike alone? It was a risk, no matter the gender.

Cheryl Strayed: There is controversy about whether people should go into the wilderness alone. Like anything, doing it solo is more dangerous because you have no one to help you if something goes wrong. But I took a calculated risk. I’m so glad I did.

Janine: Yes: risk acceptance. How much risk are you willing to take, because you can’t avoid it wholly, and sometimes staying at home is the riskiest thing you can do.

Cheryl Strayed: I can’t believe no one has asked me about the hot sex with the rad dude who lived in a tent.

I mean really people.

Roxane G: Ha. The writing was so good that our questions on that matter were all…answered, thoroughly.

Cheryl Strayed: Hah!

Kevin: Was he the first person to say “rad” ironically, or the last person to say “rad” in earnest?

Cheryl Strayed: Kevin, I think he was the last person to say rad in earnest. I wonder if he’ll show up at one of my readings.

Janeen: I was glad you wrote frankly about your own sexual desire on the trail.

Cheryl Strayed: It was really fun writing that scene.

Jack W.: Cheryl: that guy — whose hair whipped to and fro on his face determined that you were a “hobo” to be written on — did he ever publish any of that? Did you search for it after your trek?

Cheryl Strayed: I searched for the reporter from the Hobo Times, but didn’t find him. I plan to search again soon. I don’t know if he ever wrote that article about me. Not that I was a hobo.

David B: Thanks Cheryl for your great books and columns and doing this chat.

Cheryl Strayed: Thanks everyone. Nice chatting with you.

Stephen Elliott: Tell us more Cheryl! I know there’s more.

Cheryl Strayed: Mr. Sugar says hi.

The baby Sugars say “set my mama free!”

I say, “will you pour me a glass of chardonnay?”

Isaac Fitzgerald: I need to have kids.

Stephen Elliott: @Isaac you need kids like a unicorn needs a shotgun.

Cheryl Strayed: The last thing I have to say is thank you for reading my book.

But of course I have more to say. I love The Rumpus and I love the community you’ve all created with us.

Stephen Elliott: We love you Cheryl. xoxoxoxox

Cheryl Strayed: Love you too, Stephen, Isaac and everyone.

***

Related Posts:

• On Not Playing It Safe
• Wild‘s Earned Transformation
• “Read It and Weep”
• Wild is released!
• Cheryl Strayed’s Days of Yore

This week’s Letter In The Mail is from Tao Lin.

Tao is the author of six books including the novel Richard Yates, the novella Shoplifting From American Apparel. He is the founder of the literary press Muumuu house.

Here is a review of Richard Yates from The London Review of Books. Here’s an interview The Rumpus Book Club did with Tao Lin. And here’s Tao Lin’s blog.

Related Posts:

• No related posts…

When I saw the words “This week’s Letter In The Mail is from Sari Botton” at the bottom of Wednesday’s Daily Rumpus email from Stephen Elliott, my stomach dropped.

I hadn’t been nervous while writing my letter. There was something so uniquely freeing for me in the epistolary medium. Maybe it was because for once, what I wrote wouldn’t be on the Internet, searchable by certain acquaintances and family members whom I’d rather not have read it?

I’d also been operating with an outdated tally of Letters In the Mail subscribers. I thought we were still talking, like, 5/600 people, tops. Then, when I saw Stephen in NYC one day, he brought me up to date.

I’d said to him, “You know, writing my letter was a really good exercise, because with so few readers, I felt like I could take more risks.” He looked at me curiously. “What do you mean ‘so few readers’? There are 2,400 now.” Whoa.

The other reason I think it was so easy for me to reveal more on paper, through the mail, is because of a particular correspondence I have maintained through the mail for, oh, 33 years now. My friend David and I have been trading letters since 1979, when I was 14 and he was 16.

It began that summer, at sleep-away camp, where we were in The Sound of Music together. David was going out with my step-sister, who was 15, but he and I had some kind of special connection. No, no it wasn’t that kind of connection. There was never any of that kind of chemistry between us. I would talk to him about my crushes and my first boyfriend. He was more like an older brother to me. And that has turned out to be some serious glue.

One day at Sound of Music rehearsal, David slipped me a note, which I still have. He’d folded it up and addressed it to “Sari, Inc.” When I opened it, I found what was basically an invitation to be friends. I’m not allowed to tell you exactly what he wrote, because I see that at the end he requested, “Let’s keep this between me and you!” (Which is why I have my hand blocking the letter in the photo.) But it was really sweet. And it was the beginning of a correspondence that continues.

Back home from camp, David and I lived 7 minutes away by Long Island Rail Road, 15 minutes away by car. But in that first year, before he got his driver’s license, it wasn’t easy for us to get together often. If he was visiting my step-sister at my dad’s house in Westchester while I was there, my role changed – I was relegated to being just another member of the annoying family he had to put up with in order to hang out with his girlfriend. So that sucked. Phone calls were more expensive in those days, so we didn’t talk too frequently. Instead we wrote. And wrote. And wrote. Sometimes once a week, sometimes twice or more.

In the letters, we talked about being unhappy at home, and wishing we could live at camp 12 months of the year. He wrote about his frustrations with my parents – especially the time they walked in on him and my step-sister fooling around. I wrote about the boys I desperately wished would notice me, and then, when I got my first boyfriend, I wrote about the ups and downs of that.

He sent me Bruce Springsteen lyrics, and wrote about how camp was the real Promised Land. He made me tapes – the first four Springsteen records (that’s all there were then!), mixed tapes with Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, The Band, CSNY, and other classic rock/folk stuff. He was on a mission to bring my musical taste up to speed. I was raised by an opera and pop singer/slash clergyman who was in musicals, and so I grew up listening to classical, show tunes, and pop standards. I loooooved Liza Minelli and Barbara Streisand and if I was going to be David’s close friend, his surrogate little sister, I was just going to have to be a little cooler than that.

One week when his brother, Peter, was away on a school trip, David loaned me Peter’s copy of Quadrophenia. Before my mother picked me up from his house, David gave me a tutorial on how to handle the record without scratching it or getting my fingerprints on it. “You hold the edges with one hand, and the paper center with the other.” And he left me with these explicit instructions: “You have to listen to the record at least three times! And read the lyrics!” And so I did.

Sometimes I would include in my letters to David what we called “items.” They were little drawings on scraps of paper, and they usually had to do with B.S vs. B.S. – or Bruce Springsteen vs Barbara Streisand. I was mostly kidding around; I was really coming to love all the music David gave me. (Although, I can still sing all Babs’s songs on the Star Is Born soundtrack, word for word and I would totally karaoke every one, especially Queen Bee, if they were available. And I generally still love her and have many others of her records. Don’t tell David.)

David took his job of broadening my musical horizons very seriously. He brought me to my first and second concerts ever – Jackson Browne at Tanglewood in the summer of 1980, and Springsteen, at the Nassau Coliseum, New Year’s Eve, 1980 into 1981. He’s still sending me stuff. Last year, it was The Promise collection of DVDs and CDs. (Which is pretty fucking awesome.)

When he went away to college, and then I went, David and I kept writing. The pace of our correspondence definitely slowed, but we always kept in touch – and still do, to this day. There’s always been an ease for me in writing to David, no matter how long we’ve gone without being in touch. In fact, sometimes, when I’m having a hard time writing something, if I simply write, “Dear David” at the top, the words begin to flow. I call it The Dear David Method of Writing. I didn’t even realize I was invoking that when I wrote my Rumpus letter, but I’m pretty sure that’s what allowed me to open up about…well, you’ll have to read it. (I even drew some “items” for you.)

Lately my correspondence with David is mostly digital, via email and video iChat. Once a year or so, though, one of us will still drop a letter in the mail, and it’s so much more satisfying to both write and read. When I receive those occasional actual letters from David, who’s in San Francisco now, I add them to my collection of notes on the brown personalized stationery he had in high school, with postmarks dating back to the fall of 1979.

***

Here’s a bizarre fact about me: The most money I ever made came from working for the U.S. Postal Service.

From some part of 2002 to some part of 2004, I worked, on and off, as a freelance copywriter for a digital ad agency that had USPS as a client. We were tasked with re-writing the entire usps.com website, which was something like more than 600 pages. It was boring and tedious, but it was also both the easiest and most lucrative job I have ever had in my life.

Sometimes, I wrote maybe three lines in a day. Well, I’d write three options for each of the three tag lines, so nine – this or that about Click ‘N Ship™. (We copywriters called it “Click ‘N Shit.”) I shit you not, I made $75/hr doing this. Full-time, for months at a clip, as long as they needed me. Even on the many days I got to work from home and double-dipped, writing articles and essays.

Ironically, around that time, Time Out NY gave me an assignment to write about how the mail system works in NYC.

***

Among other things, for that Time Out article, I had to trail the mail carrier assigned to my neighborhood for a day. My mail carrier was a really friendly, jovial guy, and he got clearance from up top, so there I was one morning, hanging out as Joe sorted the mail. This is where it got a little weird.

The sorting area at the 10003 Post Office was a big room with lots of these kinds of desks with grids of mail slots climbing up from them. Joe’s station was next to a wall, which was covered…with Joe’s porn. Like, graphic porn. Blow jobs and people doing it, for example. I tried to avert my eyes. Joe got this weird grin on his face, and said, “Yeah, my lady co-workers are none too happy about this.” And then he giggled. “But it sure makes my day go faster here.”

I was stunned. I really didn’t want to engage with him about this, but I had a hard time believing you were allowed to hang porn on the property of the United States Postal Service. I had to ask. “They let you do that?”

“No,” he answered, shaking his head. “No, they do not! I have to have another meeting with my supervisors about it. They keep telling me I have to take it down. Well, we’ll see what they do.”

As you can probably imagine, this made the afternoon, walking from door to door with Joe, rather awkward – not to mention every time I saw him thereafter, delivering my mail.

As we snaked up and down the streets of the East Village, Joe schlepping two heavy mailbags on his shoulders, I tried to focus on other observations. Joe talked about the problems with his back, neck and knees. About how he tried to log as much overtime as he could to be able to make ends meet. “I almost never take off,” he said. “I can’t afford to.” You’d think that would also make him afraid to jeopardize his job as he seemed to be doing, but what did I know?

The more we talked, the more wrong it felt wrong for me to be making such insane money for writing puns about tracking and certified mail when this guy was breaking his back, literally, for barely enough money to live an hour away, near Kennedy Airport. It seemed so fucked up that there was all this money budgeted for advertising and the website, white collar money, but so little for the blue collar people doing the hard work. Granted, I didn’t feel bad enough to quit. But I never worked another day at the digital ad agency without thinking of Joe and the lopsidedness, the injustice, of our different pay scales.

I still think about Joe, and that cushy copywriting job I had, every time people bring up how the postal service seems to be dying in the Digital Age. I think about David, too, and how much we used to love sending and receiving letters. It was fun to get to relive that a little, for Rumpus Letters In The Mail.

Related Posts:

• A Celebration of Written Correspondence
• About Your Letters
• Post Haste
• A Celebration Of Written Correspondence
• Letters To Each Other

I went on a letter writing rampage yesterday and it’s all your fault. Thanks for that.

One of them was to Lorelei Lee about how I want to be a sex performer but I’m a wife and mother in the suburbs of Nashville so I’m settling for burlesque. I wondered if she remembered the names of the songs about prostitution that her grandmother used to sing. I thought I could use them as I develop my act. I’ve since found volumes and volumes of vintage songs about prostitution, cocaine, reefer and other forms of debauchery in Amazon’s mp3 albums. I’m in love.

Another letter was to my grandmother and was a vignette of the mundanities of my day, frozen on a page forever. It’s what she craves from our correspondence because it’s how my mother wrote to her when she was still alive. In essence, I’m a stand in for my mother as far as my grandmother is concerned. A link in the generational chain was removed 17 years ago and she and I were fused together directly. We cling to one another out of a desire to know the woman we both lost a little better. We usually send emails. She almost 93. She doesn’t have a computer, but back in the late 90s when these little typewriter looking email machines were popular, she got one to keep in touch with our generation of family members. But, I know how much happier she is from getting an envelope in her mailbox with one of her grandchildren’s names on it.

Another letter was about how perspective changes everything to Padma Viswanathan and how sometimes, once our perspective is changed, we can never go back to seeing things the way we did before. It’s a blessing and a curse and basically the theme of her letter regurgitated at her in agreement.

Another was about what the January sunset looks like in Nashville and god knows what else to Matthew Specktor. I let my son, who is five, illustrate the last page, asking him to draw something that he’d like to show a stranger.

But I digress. The point is I wrote a bunch of letters yesterday and I have you and the Letters in the Mail writers to thank for that. It feels so good to get things out in the open or to assuage my guilt for not writing my grandmother regularly or finally respond to the backlog of letters I’ve received from Rumpus writers.

Letters can be so liberating. But then there are few things in this world that aren’t liberating if looked at in the right way. Being bound and gagged and strangled can be liberating. Being led around by a chain attached to your nipples like a leash can be liberating. When it’s what you want, you have all the power over the person doing it to you. You control someone else’s desire. When it’s done against your will, the opposite is true. It’s all about context and perspective.

I think one of the reasons I write is to imprison my thoughts and experiences on the page where I can control them. It is the only way I’m able to walk in this world as a free woman. I wrote 6000 words of my sexual history a couple of weeks ago that grows by thousands of words every time I revisit it. I think I have over 10,000 words in that document now. It is my emancipation proclamation. The things in my past that I had no control over no longer control me. I can look at things I’ve done, recognize them for what they were and take responsibility for my part in it, forgive myself and move on.

xoxo

M.L. Hamilton

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Sari authors a column on The Rumpus called Conversations With Writers Braver Than Me and recently wrote an essay about her experiences as a ghostwriter. Her work appears frequently for The New York Times and New York Magazine.

Letters forthcoming from Dave Eggers, Tao Lin, Emily Rapp, Nick Flynn, and others.

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