Pushing the Envelope: Epistolary Poems
Edited by Jonas Zdanys
This is a unique anthology of epistolary poetry—poems in the form of letters. The book comprises new work by more than fifty poets from the United States, Canada, Europe, and Israel. Poetry in this collection, most written for this specific anthology, continues a tradition more than two thousand years old in combining letter-writing with poetry. The poets published here explore concerns that so many personal letters often express: love and loss, hope and redemption, turmoil and joy, outward exploration and introspection. Each poem amounts to a literary envelope that readers can open to discover lyrical language offered in the form of an epistle.
About the Editor
Jonas Zdanys was born in New Britain, Connecticut, a few months after his parents arrived in the United States from a United Nations camp for Lithuanian refugees. He received his B.A. in English from Yale University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the State University of New York. A bilingual poet and translator, he is the author of forty-three books, forty of them collections of poetry, written in English and in Lithuanian, and of translations from the Lithuanian. He has received a number of prizes, book awards, writing and travel grants, and public recognitions for his own poetry and for his translations.