Letters Written And Not Sent

This culmination of a life of poetry, art, and social justice “has the freshness of an opening argument and the majesty of a man’s last words” (Molly Peacock, author of The Analyst). Like paperweights, his lyrics are both small and hefty. His subjects range from race relations to trees, from secrets to parenthood, from ideas of god to kissing, from sons and mothers to fate, and of course, to poetry itself. Never afraid of the big questions of why human beings are alive, and what hope and justice are for, Louis-Dreyfus could take decades to finish a poem. A perfectionist, a thinker, and always inspired by visual art, he fought with himself over how to say what he wanted to say best. Like the French-Uruguayan businessman poet Jules Supervielle, whom Louis-Dreyfus translated, he felt the tug of the financial world against the pull of the lyricism of poetry, and the division marked his life and sparked ideas for his finest poems. As the heart condition that seized him made it absolutely imperative, finishing Letters Written and Not Sent literally became a life-or-death matter. This is the book that he wished to send into the world. “There’s rock-bottom integrity, a dignified modesty, and a quizzical, persistent quest for meaning in this collection. It’s a final bequest to the living from an intensely generous man.” —Rosanna Warren, author of So Forth: Poems “The poems of William Louis-Dreyfus testify to an inner life of great richness, but one that freely slipped across the border of the self into the world beyond . . . a fine collection of his work, and it is good to have it at last.” —Charles Martin, author of Future Perfect

Letters Written and Not Sent is the lifetime work of poet William Louis-Dreyfus, written over decades, culminating a passion for poetry, art and social justice. He passed away just days after the book was completed. Like paperweights, his lyrics are both small and hefty. His subjects range from race relations to trees, from secrets to parenthood, from ideas of god to kissing, from sons and mothers to fate, and of course, to poetry itself. Never afraid of the big questions of why human beings are alive, and what hope and justice are for, Louis-Dreyfus could take decades to finish a poem. A perfectionist, a thinker, and always inspired by visual art, he fought with himself over how to say what he wanted to say best. Like the French-Uruguayan businessman poet Jules Supervielle, whom Louis-Dreyfus translated, he felt the tug of the financial world against the pull of the lyricism of poetry, and the division marked his life and sparked ideas for his finest poems. As the heart condition that seized him made it absolutely imperative, finishing Letters Written and Not Sent literally became a life-or-death matter. This is the book that he wished to send into the world.

Three women, united by love and kinship, struggle to conform to the social norms of the times in which they lived. In 1931, Katherine Henderson leaves behind her small town in Kansas and the marriage proposal of a local boy to live on her own and work at the Sears & Roebuck glove counter in Chicago. There she meets Annie--a bold, outspoken feminist who challenges Katherine's idea of who she thinks she is and what she thinks she wants in life. In 1997, Katherine's daughter, Joan, travels to Lawrence, Kansas, to clean out her estranged mother's house. Hidden away in an old suitcase, she finds a wooden box containing trinkets and a packet of sealed letters to a person identified only by a first initial. Joan reads the unsent letters and discovers a woman completely different from the aloof and unyielding mother of her youth-a woman who had loved deeply and lost that love to circumstances beyond her control. Now she just has to find the strength to use the healing power of empathy and forgiveness to live the life she's always wanted to live.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1859. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.