Dear Past, Dear Alexis

Alexis Ivy:

This poem is in the form of an epistolary contrapuntal. It is three-poems-in-one: read the letter, the response, as well as reading the poem across the page. The poem is in communication and conversation, speaking directly to a concept and then personifying a reply to my message. I figure out who says what based on tone and voice. I have written a whole book using this format with the purpose of showing how poetry can be processed into post traumatic growth. This form has become a compulsion, I hadn’t meant to write a whole book of these. It’s most fun when writing to a landscape or a dead musician, though every response just comes from another part of me, making the read across even more revealing.