Today’s program is about “epistolary poetry,” that is, poetry that is written in the form of a letter to someone. My last program was about a particular genre of poetry – found poetry – and I suggested that found poetry shows us that poetry is all around us and that we should not be afraid of what we have too often been told are its hidden messages and structural mysteries. My program today presents “epistolary poetry” as a different poetic genre that also provides us with wide-ranging and foundational awareness of how we live our lives both as individuals and as members of communities.  I explore this genre more fully today and then read some epistolary poems from a book I had the great privilege and pleasure of putting together.  It’s called Pushing the Envelope: Epistolary Poetry and it was published in 2015 by Lamar University Press. It is the first major anthology of its kind.