Dear Dearly Departed

by Harold Abramowitz

The elegy, the lament, the love gone wrong of Dear Dearly Departed makes me feel sad and yet it is so beautifully written, so wry, my sadness is full of hope.

—Juliana Spahr

Dear Dearly Departed makes an entire world of gestures, all
necessarily incomplete. Consisting of letters, this innovative
reinterpretation of epistolary conventions demonstrates the punishing anxiety that overtakes language when its crucial addressee is lost—a state in which language itself seems to be rejected as a pre-condition of its utterance. —Stan Apps

Dear Dearly Departed, There are traps. This letter is, perhaps, just such a trap. This letter is just the type of trap we were always talking about. We are always talking about traps, about this letter, about just this type of trap. We are always talking. We were talking about traps, perhaps, like this letter, by the lake one night, and it was cold. And I had my shoes on. I had new shoes on. And this is a trap. The world is a trap.

Palm Press 2008 First Edition $15.00 Poetry ISBN 978-0-9789262-5-0 0-9789262-5-0