Dear Snodsy

Anne Sexton was famous for her prolific correspondence. (see previous post Razor's Edge.) I was always drawn in particular to the letters she wrote to W.D. Snodgrass. She would begin with "Dear Snodsy..." The words that looped and marched down the page after the salutation were sometimes clever, sometimes pathetic, but always real.

It seems to me that everyone should have a "Dear Snodsy" in their lives. For me, Snodsy embodies the call to the universe that gets caught in the clouds.

I don't imagine when she was manically scribbling all those years ago that she ever realized that the festering stew of her troubled soul would one day be published far and wide. That entire classes would be dedicated to parsing out her metaphors, mapping her rise to literary greatness, and diagnosing the recipe of her demise. That her words would be plucked like feathers from a Christmas goose leaving only bruised and shivered skin for the world to see.

Blogging has taken most of the personal elements of communication and made them public. Today none of us will have to wait until we are dead to have our most intimate thoughts and insights shouted from the rooftops. From the halls of Montezuma, our demons dance over cyber waves of pain. Our ideas, our projects, our children, our faith, our pieces, are strung like laundry to flutter in the breeze.

"DEAR SNODSY," we type in bold black font, "come play in my midnight garden."

And, we wait, for his reply.