My debut poetry chapbook, Love Letters to Ghosts, was published last month! It’s available for sale via online retailers including Bookshop.org or directly from me. What I’m writing about today is the beautiful cover image, why I chose it, what I see in it.
When I learned that my publisher, Meat for Tea, was open to writers selecting their cover art, I really wanted to use something by my friend and collaborator, Lauren Kindle. I love the vibrancy, joy, and colorful contemplation of her paintings, collages, and drawings. She even has some that depict letter-writing, either with a figure in the act of writing or with a piece of mail as an object in a still life.
As I looked through Lauren’s online portfolio, I found many beautiful maybes. Then I saw a monotype called “Black Socks and Bouquet” and I knew it was the one.
Two human figures, depicted gently with just a few strokes of black ink, gaze at one another across a gray distance. The person in the background has just stepped through an arched doorway. They hold an outrageously large bouquet of flowers, bright and radiant in the gloom. The foreground figure seems ready to move out of the space, with one shoulder obscured by a curtain or doorway, but she is looking over her other shoulder toward the flower-bearer as if suddenly captivated.
Who, in this picture, is the lover, and who is the beloved? Who is the letter-writer, and who is the ghost?
What captivates me is the power of the connection between the two figures, as shown in their locked gazes and the way their bodies are turned toward one another, combined with the atmospheric magic created by the monotype method. The texture and tonality of the ink gives the image a surreal quality, while the few spots of color sing out in surprise.
I imagine that the foregrounded figure is remembering or dreaming of someone bringing her a (real or metaphorical) bunch of flowers. If that’s what’s happening, then the person with the bouquet is the “ghost” who lives in memory or imagination. But the opposite could also be true; maybe the person with the flowers is the dreamer/rememberer, and the person hovering on the edge of the frame is the ineffable one being wooed with flowers into lingering a little longer.
Either way, I revel in the ambiguity.
The poems in Love Letters to Ghosts make both kinds of movements. Some of them are based on sweet (or bittersweet memories) of a person who once brought me flowers and called me their beloved. Through those poems, I look back at people over my shoulder as I move into another space.
Other poems were written to the receding “ghosts” of my younger self: the dream of becoming an astronaut or a painter, the dream of a world where it’s easy for people to get along. By writing about them I am asking them to linger a while longer, even as I know they have to leave, no matter how big a bouquet I offer them.
A Note on the Title
My book title was influenced by the work of Carolyn Cushing, who proposes writing love letters to the dead to “keep up the loving flow,” and by Janet MacFadyen, whose poetry book Love Letters to the Wild is forthcoming in 2025 from Dos Madres Press.
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