30 April (1963): Rachel Carson to Dorothy Freeman
So, a word before I turn out the light.
29 April (1913): Franz Kafka to Felice Bauer
Today I thought that one had nothing to complain of so long as one lived with this dual feeling: that someone one loves is well...
28 April (1959): Gregory Corso to Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I reached heaven and it was syrupy. / It was oppressively sweet. / Croaking substances stuck to my knees. / Of all substances St. Michael...
24 April (1933): Helene Johnson to Dorothy West
They all miss you so. Geo. Bernard Shaw’s been over here since you’ve been gone. We can go to Oak Bluffs too after the crowd...
23 April (1989): Kurt Vonnegut to George Strong
I’m home again, to the extent that anybody’s really got a home anymore.
22 April (1875): Gustave Flaubert to Madame Roger Des Genettes
They advise me to rest. But why rest? To relax, to avoid solitude, etc., a lot of unattainable goals. I know of only one remedy:...
21 April (1944): Marianne Moore to John Warner Moore
The trains are badly crowded but I had a good seat both going & coming, & such comfortable downy seats & so clean that if...
20 April (1965): Norman Mailer to Edmund Skellings
Well now listen, God’s little flutings, I heard that Hawaiian harp which passes for your nervous system go wingdinging out into the great North night...
17 April (1950): E.E. Cummings to Ezra Pound
A story, even if possible stranger, was being widely circulated in the nation’s capitol tonight with regard to the identity of the presumed plotter. He...
16 April (1962): Ted Berrigan to Sandy Berrigan
My darling, you do whatever you think, and I’ll be there come hell, high water, or the complete force of Pinkerton’s detectives.
15 April (1938): George Orwell to Stephen Spender
Even if when I met you I had not happened to like you, I should still have been bound to change my attitude, because when...
14 April (1950): Jean Rhys to Peggy Kirkaldy
Here, Jean Rhys writes to friend Peggy Kirkaldy about the growing legal troubles of her third husband, Max Hamer. Hamer would soon be convicted of...
13 April (1922): Yvor Winters to Harriet Monroe
If one were to write of pale lavender clouds in a pale green sky, people would say one was drunk or imitating Conrad Aiken, and...
10 April (1944): Anthony Hecht to his Family
Even on your own free time you cannot manage to think the thoughts you want to, and escape from the army for a while. Everywhere...
9 April (1970): James Schuyler to Ron Padgett
Civilization is all right, but I prefer to be one of its discontents. Except that’s getting to be a bit modish, isn’t it.
8 April (1966): Robert Creeley to Bela Zempleny, U.S. Department of State
I am very blessed to share a community with other men in the act of writing, and it is their respect and belief that I...
7 April (1955): William Carlos Williams to Denise Levertov
You never wrote me so long a letter, so full of the small details of your life. It is characteristic of you that it took...
6 April (1822): Mary Shelley to Maria Gisborne
The man who, I believe, was half drunk, replied only by all the oaths and abuse in which the Italian language is so rich. He...
3 April (1930): Theodore Dreiser to Yvette Szekely
But here the drama is so simple. Search for food. Guard yourself or be food for something else. A few ants. A few flies.
1 April (1849): Edgar Allan Poe to Anson G. Chester
My tantalized spirit here
Blandly reposes,
Forgetting, or never
Regretting, its roses —
31 March (1957): Zora Neale Hurston to Everett Edward Hurston Jr.
However, there is a local acquaintance with $3,000,000 who had not an ulcer to his name and therefore was looked down upon by other millionaires....
30 March (1973): E.B. White to Mr. Nadeau
Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things...
27 March (1944): Dashiell Hammett to Lillian Hellman
I live among inconveniences that are no longer discomforts. I know where I stand with god and the world. I am a dull but not...
26 March (1915): Robert Frost to Nathan Haskell Dole
Here, Robert Frost writes editor and poet Nathan Haskell Dole on his (Frost’s) birthday. He reflects on his transition into middle-age and recounts a dream...
