Platforms and Sites

A Poetry Mixtape Edited by Phoebe Wang
The Poems
There are no stars tonight
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain.
There is even room...
I threw away your letters.
Years ago, just like that.
The tight black swirls,
circles and strokes
filling fine sheets —
I would not see them again....
it's okay if you only learned about your culture from Google
it's okay if you only read your language at the public library
it's...
We Twitter, Tinder, Tumblr through eternity. Loquacious
text messages flit from fingertips, waves of data spill
through our skulls. Every cm2 of oxygen overflowing...
I dreaded those future aeons when I would not be present —
an endless succession of days I would miss, with their own
news and songs and styles of machine. ...
My dad taught me to never give out my real name, age,
address, or photos. This seemed obvious to me. My fake
birthday entry was always my crush's birthday plus a
...
Freezes, goes blue screen, shuts down. Dead pixel, dark.
Ghost echoes, lossy in the source code. Time zones away,
people who have actually shaken hands with my online friend...
We could read your words from anywhere
but you felt like the only soul sitting
in your swivel chair listening to your parents
dream-breathing down the hall...
After Li Po
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate,...
When Daniel Harris stepped out of his car
the policeman was waiting. Gun raised.
I use the past tense though this is irrelevant
in Daniel's language, which...
Those tweets I sent about Duke Ellington
While my mom was being evicted again
According to what ethics under the sun
Can I possibly have been speaking? A
Kind...
Where there’s a wall
there’s a way through a
gate or door. There’s even
...The Playlist
We are currently adding to the Mixtape playlists, so check back soon and often! Send us your recitation of one the poems in this Mixtape, and we may add it to the Playlist!
Recommended Reading
Teaching Epistolary Poems:
- Brooks-Motl, Hannah. “Learning the Epistolary Poem.” Poetry Foundation. 29 August 2013.
- Rekdal, Paisley. “Paisley Rekdale– The Epistolary Poem.” Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies: In the Classroom Blog Series. 15 March 2020.
- Zdanys, Jonas, ed. Pushing the Envelope: Epistolary Poems. Lamar University Press, 2015.
Historical Epistolary Poems:
- Horace; Ferry, David, trans. The Epistles of Horace. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997.
- Finch, Anne, Countess of Winchilsea. “A Letter to Daphnis.” 1685.
- Montague, Lady Mary Wortley. “Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband." 1724.
- Mlinko, Ange. “Anne Finch: Countess of Winchilsea: ‘The Answer’". Poetry Foundation. 14 July 2010.
- Ovid; Murgatroyd, Paul, Bridget Reeves, Sarah Parker, trans. Ovid's Heroides: A New Translation and Critical Essays. Routledge, 2017.
- Pope, Alexander “Eloisa to Abelard”, 1717.
- Pope, Alexander “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot”, 1735.
Contemporary Epistolary Poems:
- Browne, Laynie. The Desire of Letters. Counterpath Press. 2010.
- Hughes, Langston. “Letter.” Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
- Schuyler, James. “Letter Poem to Kenneth Koch.” Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2010.
- Knight, Chelene. Dear Current Occupant: A Memoir. Bookhug Press, 2018
- Lai, Larissa. Iron Goddess of Mercy. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021.
- Mayer, Bernadette. The Desire of Mothers to Please Others in Letters. Hard Press Editions, 1994, reissued by Nightboat Books, 2017.
- Pollard, Clare. Ovid’s Heroines. Bloodaxe Books, 2013.
- Tsiang, Sarah Yi-Mei, Status Update. Oolichan Books, 2015.



