Letters to Poets: Conversations About Poetics, Politics, and Community

Letters to Poets honors and commemorates the hundredth anniversary of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet by partnering a selection of 14 of the country’s leading contemporary poets with 14 emerging poets and documenting their correspondences. These poets challenge the hierarchies and pitfalls endemic to the mentoring process, and ask some of the day’s toughest, most vital questions concerning race, class, and gender. Spanning a range of not only generations but cultural, aesthetic, and economic backgrounds, these diverse pairings both challenge and support each other artistically and politically. The result is in turns dramatic, enlightening, and entertaining.

Contributors include: Anselm Berrigan & John Yau, Brenda Coultas & Victor Hernández Cruz, Truong Tran & Wanda Coleman, Patrick Pritchett & Kathleen Fraser, Hajera Ghori & Alfred Arteaga, Jennifer Firestone & Eileen Myles, Karen Weiser & Anne Waldman, Jill Magi & Cecilia Vicuña, Rosamond S. King & Jayne Cortez, Judith Goldman & Leslie Scalapino, Traci Gourdine & Quincy Troupe, Brenda Iijima & Joan Retallack, Dana Teen Lomax & Claire Braz-Valentine, Albert Flynn DeSilver & Paul Hoover