Dear Mother, Dear Father, Dear Sister, Dear Brother, Dear Grandmother, Dear Grandfather, Dear Aunt, Dear Uncle, Dear Friend, Dear Neighbor, Dear Librarian, Dear Doctor, Dear Professor, Dear Roommate, Dear EX, Dear College Advisor, Dear Therapist—

Who in your life had supportive, quality advice for you that you couldn’t follow and for what reason? Parental pressure, shyness, fear, lack of resources, lack of belief in yourself, too many responsibilities to others? Lack of belief in the advice giver?

How might you take that advice now? Or give it to someone else who might use it?

Please read what you can of Dear Memory by Victoria Chang in the Kindle free sample (or purchase the book—it is worth it!). Sit with the idea of writing to such a person and see who pops up in your memory quickly or after a day or so. Write a letter telling them what you appreciated, why you may not have acted on what you learned from them, and how you still can.

I very much look forward to posting your writing from this idea in letter form during the month of February.

Online you can find information and many YouTube videos featuring Victoria Chang on writing Dear Memory and other of her books. I think her work will inspire many pieces for you.

Here are excerpts from the letter “Dear Teacher,” the one who led her first poetry writing workshop. It inspired my writing idea for you:

I’m sorry for never saying a word in your class the entire semester. I’m sorry that striking forward scared me, made me numb, stitched my mouth closed. But you gave me so many new words that I didn’t know how to use yet…

Fall Reading List for Victoria:

Louise Gluck: Descending Figure

                        The House on Marshland

Wallace Stevens: Collected Poems

Sappho: Every shred possible?

Neruda: Collected

Vallejo: Posthumous Collected (I think)

does Plath fit in your life—Collected—and Lowell—Selected

If you saw my poems today, I hope you could see that I heard you even though you couldn’t hear me…

What I learned from you was to forget sun, that the moon burned more, to cling to things that didn’t seem to leave a trace, such as memory or silence or cruelty or beauty. I couldn’t fully understand any of this then.

****

It was a decade before Chang took another poetry writing class. But what she learned from this teacher came to be very valuable to her poems.

If you want to write a variation on this writing idea, you could choose to write to someone who didn’t take your advice and see what you discover in writing that letter.