Ghost Letters

the long version

“In one of her spirit-letters, Emily Dickinson writes, ‘I a phantom, to you a phantom, rehearse the story.’ Richard McCann’s <em>Ghost Letters</em> are posted from our moment’s most laden and poignant territory, the zone where mortality and desire intersect. These poems have as much courage as they do craft; the result is an indelible book which illuminates the way the living and the dead sustain an intimate conversation which death changes but cannot silence. This ferociously tender poet instructs us that to be fully alive is to be entirely haunted.” —Mark Doty “Richard McCann writes not about, but from, his losses. We listen to his ghosts and they are ours also.” —Jean Valentine “<em>Ghost Letters</em> reminds me of Rilke. To read these poems is to be frightened by exposure to our transparency and evanescence. It would be easy to say that these poems are about forbidden love, but the greater risk they take is the forbiddenness of feeling itself. In these reckless, beautifully written poems, the pilgrim instructs us, through example, that life and death are mutually contagious.” —Tony Hoagland