Letterlocking

by Stephanie Staab

LETTERLOCKING is an ode to postcards, grocery lists, ideas on cocktail napkins, notes passed under doors, envelopes, and secrets. It is a record of the way the written word leaves its mark on us and the ways we hold on to one another during separations of all kinds. From gentle repetitions that read like pleadings—a do-over by the undone—to soft spaces of courting rituals that stay between lovers, inner turmoils easier to write than to say aloud, and imagined closure for friends and enemies on the receiving end, the epistolic poems in Stephanie Staab’s LETTERLOCKING reveal our deepest intimacies and pay homage to the security of an unbroken seal.

Genres: Poetry

46 pages, Paperback

First published August 22, 2023

Reviews

[Hannah Warren · Rating 5 out of 5]

“To friends and enemies, Staab writes, ‘I hope [this letter] finds you changed’—a gift she also offers her reader. Encased in Letterlocking’s envelopes and coffrets are quiet intimacies, cockroaches, ‘blood and melon juice on the counter.’ Read these poems like love letters. Read them like secrets.”

—Hannah V. Warren, author of Slaughterhouse for Old Wives’ Tales