Pen & Page Prompt #14

This Week: A Mysterious Letter

Pen & Page: What we hold in abeyance

The upcoming prompt suggests a situation in which you are in possession of an unopened letter. But suppose you have never been the holder of such a curious missive. So ends this week’s prompt. Right? No so fast. You’re a poet. You dwell in the imagination. Allow your imagination absolute rein (Correct usage, by the way!) Give in and loosen your hold on the horse. Allow your feisty mare to stretch her neck and find her (and your) freedom.

What I am suggesting is letting go of the “That’s not what really happened” of the mind fighting what is best for the poem. In other words, what’s with the dependence upon absolute truth when writing a poem? Are you writing memoir? Or are you creating an atmosphere in which a greater truth can be revealed?

A mentor from my MFA days decades ago, frequently reminded us, “What’s good for the poem, is not necessarily what is the truth.” If the sun was shining, but a deepening cloud cover that washes the sky bolsters the atmosphere of the poem, then clouds it should be. Robert Polito’s dictum still sticks, and with it, I beg you, why are you restricting yourself, pulling back on the reins of your imagination?

So you never dwelt in the unknown of an unopened letter? So what? Make it up. Allow your imagination to invent the circumstances. Your mind has known conundrum, your senses have known temptation. Hands have felt the heft of an envelope, the grain of the paper, the crumpled corner. Project. Invent.

Have at it, poets. Gallop on.

Photo by Kev

Prompt #13: The Weight of the Unopened

Setup

Unopened letters hold a shimmering tension: possibility, fear, intimacy, and restraint all pressed into a single envelope. The tension comes not from what’s written inside, but from everything that gathers around it, the guesses, the dread, the small disappearances of courage. An unopened letter is a charged object, a vessel of possibility and consequence. Poems thrive in this potent unknowable space.

Core Prompt

Write a poem centered on an unopened letter. Instead of opening it, let the poem wander through your guesses, your fears, the versions of reality that might be sealed inside. Keep the envelope closed; let possibility do the work.

Craft Menu (choose 1-2)

• Object Details As Emotional Weather: Let the envelope’s weight, smudge, postmark, texture, or bends become indicators of emotional tension or history.

• Negative Capability: Stay with uncertainty instead of solving it. Resist the urge to reveal the “true” content of the letter. Let ambiguity create meaning.

• Implied Backstory: Allow the circumstances — the sender’s handwriting, the date on the postmark, where you found the letter to hint at the story without telling it.

• Physical Reaction: Use the body as a truth-teller: the hesitation before picking it up, the pulse at the throat, the slight sway in balance.

• Doubling / Shadowing: Let the poem run two tracks: what the speaker fears is inside the letter, and what they hope is inside.

• Pressure and Pause: Play with pacing: fragments, short lines, interrupted syntax — to mimic the emotional stutter of avoidance.

Shape Options (choose 1)

• List poem: List what the letter could contain. List what the speaker will not do. List the many versions of the truth.

• Duplex / Ghazal-inspired couplets: Repetition, echo, and variation mimic circling around what is withheld.

Constraints (choose 1-2)

• Do not reveal the sender’s identity: Let the poem resist even that bit of certainty.

• Include one image of weather: Let atmosphere mirror the emotional state.

• Use only physical details: No interior thoughts — let the envelope do the talking.

• Begin with a line of misdirection: Create a false sense of clarity before slipping into uncertainty.

• End with a gesture, not a conclusion: A hand hovering, a drawer closing, a breath held.

Share Back

Share a few lines or the whole draft. What emotional weather forms around your unopened letter? What silence carries the heat?

Optional Reflection

What is it about uncertainty that unsettles or attracts you? How does the act of not knowing shape the voice or stance of the poem?

Writing is the itinerary of the soul. We write from it, and we write to find it. I wish you a week of soulful writing and great satisfaction.

Next week’s post is the more expansive one (1st and 3rd Thursdays) with discussion on craft, books, the writer's life, perhaps upcoming events, and as always, my evocative and generative, guided prompt with photo image. Won’t you consider joining as a paid member and helping to support my work?

In the meantime, stay well. Celebrate each day.

Write and thrive,
Robbin
10poetrynotebooks@gmail.com