LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: HELENA RECKITT: AUGUST 2009


Why do we write love letters? To put into words what that special someone probably already knows but we often forget to spell out? To woo a new lover or try to reclaim an old one? What about love letters that we never send?

These questions zipped through my mind as I made this selection. For the most part I chose letters that had the tang of everyday speech about them over the more poetic efforts. One of the challenges of writing a love letter seems to be to express our most deeply felt emotions without succumbing to generalization and cliché. So I gravitated to letters that conveyed the writer's voice and idiosyncracies as well as those that hinted at stories.

Like MAC ADDICTION, which begins lackadaisically, "This is a love letter. I mean love list," before presenting a ledger of everything that the writer finds irresistible about her lover, from their "silly insecurities" to the fact that the initials BK made both of them think of Burger King (a reference that eludes me entirely, which is part of its appeal.) The letter's language is techy, peppered with allusions to email, photoshop and Gameboy, and the lovers seem not to have met in person but fallen for each other online. This suggests that the practice of writing love notes is alive and well in cyberspace, as well as in text messages.

The sense of intimacy that these lovers find on the internet contrasts with the distance that exists between the writer of PURPLE HOODIE and the classmate she longs for but has never spoken to. Reading this letter, I swear that I would have had a crush on the same schoolmate, whose hair falls across one eye and who wears the same sweatshirt each day. Where the tone of these youthful writers is colloquial and unassuming, the author of NATIVE MEDIA flaunts his or her knowledge of scientific terminology in a gesture that is both showoffy and tongue-in-cheek, likening their passion to Darwin's of the Galapagos finches, and claiming to love “empirically, mitochondrially, and cytokinically.”

Once the chaotic early stages of falling love have dissipated, or settled into something more cozy, it can be hard to remember what all the fuss was about. So I enjoyed reading letters that capture the delirium of infatuation, like FREE TO FEEL where “the bars of the cage seemed to explode with an energy that I can’t describe” or the soaring sense of confidence that fills the writer of SPARKLY CLEOPATRA GOLD. "Since you've claimed me," she confides, "I've found that I no longer wear makeup when I leave the house every morning," continuing with a claim that will many readers with envy, "I've ceased to obsess over the fact that my BMI regularly fluctuates between "normal" weight and "overweight." Or the author of GRIN, who notes that people keep asking "Why do you grin like that? (It's all because of You, Dearest!).”

A truism of fiction – that evil characters are more interesting than sympathetic ones both to write and read about – perhaps applies to letter writing, too. Certainly intense, unrequited and illicit love seems to inspire more letters than the pleasures of long-term relationships do. So I was happy to read an eloquent appreciation of a life spent with another in the wedding anniversary letter GROWING OLD WITH YOU. Gratitude for a lover also motivates OUTTA OUR FREAKIN MINDS. But here romance is long gone and the writer acknowledges the madness of their former relationship ("My mom thinks I'm crazy to still get along with you") while concluding "Would I change anything? Hell no."

In contrast to these writers' certainty about their feelings, many express ambivalence and confusion. In a few short lines, the author of JUST FOR YOU shifts from stating that they would not repeat the same mistakes, to admitting "I'd do it all again,/Just for you." Bewilderment also characterizes A LITTLE CAUGHT UP as the writer wonders whether to stay with her high school sweetheart or succumb to the attentions of the college hunk. Meanwhile, EVERYTHING THAT IS CALLED WRONG ALWAYS FEELS SO WONDERFUL focuses on forbidden love, hinting at a Romeo and Juliet-style elicit romance.

Sometimes we compose love letters less to convey our feelings to someone else than to represent them to ourselves. "Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce, / For he tames it that fetters it in verse," wrote the Elizabethan poet John Donne, and several letters seem determined to shape, control and understand potentially overwhelming passions.

This selection also includes two letters that could not be sent because the intended reader is not around: the child-in-potential addressed in NEVER BE and the recently deceased partner in CASSEROLES AND HALF-SMILES.

When we write to someone they become suddenly, sharply present, even (or perhaps especially) if they do not actually exist. As with the other strongest letters in this selection, by appropriating the love letter convention for their own ends, these take from it what they need to make the genre their own.

the love letter collection