Addressing the Imaginary Reader: 3 Writing Prompts

Image: Angela Yuriko Smith on Pixabay

Introduction

Helen Vendler, American literary critic, writes in her book SILENT LISTENERS, "Although no one else is present in fact, the solitary poet is frequently addressing someone else, someone not in the room. "  This week's theme is exploring to whom we are writing.  Who are we imagining as we write, if we are  indeed conscious of imagining anybody?

First Mentor Poem

To You
WALT WHITMAN
 
   STRANGER! if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me, why
         should you not speak to me?
   And why should I not speak to you?
                                              ~ LEAVES OF GRASS (1900)

Writing Prompt #1

Directly address your future reader.  What will the reader need to know? Is there anything you need to explain? Write whatever you want to say to your imagined future reader(s).

Second Mentor Poem

MORE FROM VENDLER:  “...poets address their poems, in whole or in part, to someone they do not know and cannot set eyes on, their invisible listener. George Herbert speaks to God; Walt Whitman to the reader in futurity; John Ashbery to a painter of the past. What are we to make of this choice of addressee? With many visible listeners presumably available---the beloved, the patron, the child, the friend---why does the poet feel he or she must hold a colloquy with an invisible other?"

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This is my letter to the world
EMILY DICKINSON

This is my letter to the world
That never wrote to me, --
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty,
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!

Writing Prompt #2

• With so many confidant’s available, who is the imagined other  you MUST speak to? Say what you need to say.
• Like Dickinson, write your “letter to the world.”

Who Did PoBo Writers Address?

The following are examples of our writer's directly addressing someone, or something -- excerpted from their poems.

• Is it enough, dark traveler? Is it enough for both of us?
• Grandma, did you know your grandma?
• I write to the me that remembers why I'm here
• Because you are here with me, I am writing to you. You are witnessing me, and the value of that is not lost on me.
• I don't mean to deceive you, but I fragment easily.
• Dear future readers, I wonder if you’re out there.
• TO whom it may concern…
• Dear Sir/Madam,  In return I say I am not that person.
• Maybe Ando, that pudgy Mexican kid who nobody knew was writing mysteries about all the subtle crimes being committed against his sensibilities.
• Perhaps I should listen to you first/ if you’re ready to share/ I’ll creep inside your mind and search until I find you there
• Allow your thirsty souls to open, to be saturated, in the daily wonders--strip yourself naked and see all that we take for granted.
• If you have to break, break into a million stars because you shine. You will shine! Then tell me about it.

For Discussion

To You (excerpt)
WALT WHITMAN
 
Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands
Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true soul and body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work, farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem,
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

SOURCE: https://poets.org/poem/you

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