Dear Beth Ann Fennelly 2021
As part of the 2021 Dear Poet project, students around the country and the world wrote letters to Beth Ann Fennelly in response to a video of her reading her poem “Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding” aloud. Beth Ann Fennelly wrote letters back to four of these students; their letters and her replies are included below.
Beth Ann Fennelly also wrote a response to all of the participants of this year's Dear Poet project.
Dear Readers of “Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding,”
When I was asked to contribute a poem to this project, I had a hard time choosing which poem to pick. Eventually I went with this poem from my first book because I wrote it when I was not too much older than you are now—I was twenty-two. Some of you asked if the poem is autobiographical, and it sure is. I’m very close with my former college roommates, and one of them, Carmen, got married during my first year of graduate school. I was working as a teaching assistant, making $8,000 a year, which is to say, I was broke. Actually, that’s a lie. At that point, you’d have to give me money for me to be broke. Anyway, Carmen asked me to write a poem for her wedding, which was such a sweet gesture—she’s always supported my writing habit and in college would listen patiently while I read her whatever I was working on, which had probably been composed through a scrim of tears, fueled by red wine and filched cigarettes, after some boy had broken my heart. Which is to say: bad. I was bad. But dear sweet affirming Carmen never did a thing but encourage me. God, I love her.
So when she asked me to write her a poem, I wanted to, if for no other reason than it could serve in place of a wedding present, which I couldn’t afford to buy her.
So I tried. I really did. But the type of poem that is appropriate to read at a wedding is optimistic and celebratory. And those feelings were nowhere to be found in my wrung-out heart, because my parents were getting divorced after twenty-nine years of marriage. In most ways, I’m lucky to have had so many years with a stable family; by the time my folks got divorced, I was already living on my own, so there was less physical and emotional disruption to my life than if I was a child who had to swap houses every weekend, or get involved in a nasty custody battle, etc. But my ability to believe in unending love, my hope for my own future of marital bliss—erased completely. If people married almost thirty years can still stop loving each other, does love even exist?
So I told Carmen I couldn’t write her a poem.
Instead I wrote “Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding,” secretly. I didn’t show it to her until much later.
And I didn’t give her a wedding gift, either, not even a generic set of steak knives, like I threatened—I couldn’t afford to.
But this story has a few important updates.
I mentioned above that I was a few months into my graduate degree, an MFA I was earning at the University of Arkansas. And I had already made a few good friends. One of them, a sweet guy named Tommy, made me feel so comfortable that I started sharing my work with him. He listened to my poems as kindly as Carmen. And we became friends, then good friends, then best friends, and we still are. Tommy is my husband of twenty-three years, and we have three kids, and we still like each other about 98.6% of the time. So maybe that’s one reason I have a soft spot for “Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding,”—it was written in this narrow window in which there already was a Tommy, though he was not yet MY Tommy. Ahead of me: love, the big love. As it is, I hope, ahead of you.
The second update is this: years later, the St. Louis public transportation system printed some poems on posters for their buses, and they chose my poem. So for her fifteenth anniversary, Carmen received a copy of the poem at last, in the form of a framed poster, which hangs in her house in South Bend.
Oh, and I even gave her a set of steak knives, for reals.
Thank you, all of you, for reading my poem and writing to me. These days of no hugs, no interaction with strangers, all smiles hidden behind masks—these days can be a bit lonely-making. Your letters—I read them all, and was de-lonelied, profoundly. Words chosen with care and written with a desire to be honest can do that, can build a human connection that helps with the lonelies. This I know. And you do, too, or you wouldn’t have written me.
With the hope that somehow the universe will bring us the chance to meet (somehow, somewhere) in person,
Beth Ann Fennelly,
Oxford, MS
Poet Laureate of Mississippi, 2016-2021
From Celeste, Grade 10
Dear Ms. Beth Ann Fennelly,
My name is Celeste, I am sixteen years old, and I attend Cherokee High School as a sophomore. Your poem "Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding” resonated with me as a teen trying to figure out what a “relationship” and “love” really is to me. Your ability to shift moods so quickly and effectively immediately stood out. One moment you are explaining the sticky glow in the dark stars you still have on your ceiling as an adult and then the next you exclaim, “[You’ve] listened to the songs / of the galaxy.” It was just so eloquently written that I have trouble putting it into words.
Off the bat, it was extremely refreshing to hear an adult say they didn’t know all the answers, especially about love. From my experience it is too often portrayed that there comes a time when you’re “older” that you suddenly realize the meaning of love and its complexities and the keys to the universe are handed to you somehow. As a result of this I’ve grown this irrational fear that I’ll be the one exception. That I’ll be the one exception who doesn’t find their true love and have someone to grow old with. But, in your poem I feel a sense of solace in knowing that I’m not the only one who doesn’t know what it all means. Essentially, “I would rather / give you your third set of steak knives / than tell you what I know” feels like the story of my life. And I’m the generation who’s going to need to know all the answers; “How do you propose we save our planet from burning to a crisp? Oh, sorry my bad...finish your math homework first.” Also, I love how slightly bitter you are at the bride of this wedding you are going to. She’s the one getting married yet asks you to write a speech about love is such a funny concept to me. The line, “You ask me for a poem about love / in place of a wedding present, trying to save me / money“ while it lightens the mood I love your ending theme of how ultimately, “miniature and breakable” we as humans are.
I find it ironic that your entire poem is about not knowing answers but, I have some questions I would love to ask you. What did you end up saying at Carmen's wedding? Were there any challenges you faced when writing this poem or afterwards? How do you not let your art affect your mental health since you're constantly tapping into emotions both good and bad? How can you differentiate between when to take criticism of your work and when to be confident in what you’ve made despite others not understanding its meaning? I’ve been making short films and getting feedback from professors and peers. I recently showed a short film to my class for which I was very proud of and excited to share with others. But afterwards I got heavily criticized by the professors on multiple aspects of it while also having two of my peers message me saying it was the best film they’ve seen throughout the entirety of the course. While I agreed with some of the professor's negative evaluation of the piece it has since rubbed me the wrong way, leaving me with conflicting emotions about criticism vs. confidence.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my letter Ms. Ann Fennelly. I look forward to hearing from you soon and I can’t wait to read more of your work!
Sincerely,
Celeste
From Grace, Grade 9
Dear Beth Ann Fennelly:
My name is Grace and I am a freshman at Woodstock Union High School in Woodstock, Vermont. I am writing to you about your poem “A Poem Not to be Read at Your Wedding” as a part of an assignment for Ms. Fountain’s English I class. I was drawn to your poem because I really love the idea of making a poem about what you want to say but can’t. I remember my Dad and I were talking one night about how movies and TV shows give people the wrong impression about how an event is supposed to go and this poem reminded me of that conversation. If I am being completely honest, I’m not really that big of a poem lover, but I really enjoyed your poem because there was a little bit of humor involved and it was very honest.
I particularly liked the line “For three nights I’ve lain under glow-in-the-dark stars I’ve stuck to the ceiling over my bed. I’ve listened to the songs of the galaxy” because it reminded me of a picnic under the stars. I really like how you added that from the perspective of the stars we are just little objects that are breakable and useless. That to me is a very good comparison because I feel like many times people say “event of the year” or “you can’t miss this” but is it really that important? This poem really does show that there is so much more to the world than the big party or event and that things are not always what they seem or as exciting as people say.
I find this poem very fascinating because it is such a different perspective, I have never really read or thought about a poem like this before. A type of event that stood out to me when I was reading this poem was a family dinner. When I hear the words “A big family dinner” I picture people laughing and talking about what is new in their lives, children running around and a huge feast that could feed five times the people there. Well family dinners don’t go like that or rarely ever do. The truth is that the “Big family dinner” that everyone is so excited about is just a bunch of people, who rarely take the time to visit each other, try and make small talk and put on fake smiles while trying to laugh at someone's funny joke. I think that it is awful that we have such high expectations, because when things don’t go exactly how we expected or what we thought was going to happen, we can get really mad and ruin a still perfectly good family dinner.
When I first read your poem I didn't do the audio version, so when I read your poem in my head I thought that it was very sarcastic. This poem made me laugh the first time I read it because I thought that it was really funny. Then I listened to the video of you reading the poem and I realized that it was more of a wise poem trying to give a lesson to the people getting married. It was absolutely incredible to me about how this poem can have two completely different tones and I really enjoyed it. I really liked how it was a very sarcastic or humorous poem in my head, but I loved that when I heard you read the poem I got this whole different feeling of it being very serious.
I wonder what caused you to write this poem? Did a person actually ask you to write a poem for their wedding and you created this poem instead? I wonder about these things because this sounds like a poem that you could write in the moment when someone asked you to write a poem about their wedding.
Thank you for writing this poem. Like I said at the beginning of this letter, I am not a big poem person but this was a poem that I could really relate to and I really enjoyed reading.
Sincerely,
Grace
From Anni, Grade 12
Dear Beth Ann Fennelly,
I am going to be brutally honest with you twice as a preface to my letter: The first thing I need to admit is that I found myself reading the 20 poems of the “Dear Poet” selection only because of an assignment in my AP Literature class. We have been studying poetry of all types throughout the year and the latest assignment was to choose a poem from the 20 on poets.org and write a letter to the poet, of course submitting the letter to my teacher as well. My second admission is that I had a distaste for poetry in the beginning months of the school year. I enjoyed it more than math or science, but I found it rather confusing and consequently, found poetry units less engaging than novel units in English class. As the year comes to a close, however, I have reevaluated my position on poetry. I now can comprehend the complexities of older poetry where a man describes a woman in such elaborate detail you would think her to be a goddess, but the poems that I fell in love with are the more simple, modern poems. The poems that, for the first time since Kindergarten, pushed literature to second place in my list of favorite things to study, are the poems like yours.
My name is Anni. I am a Texas High School Senior who is, admittedly, a bit snarky (although my mother would say I’m sweet) and who loved your poem “Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding”. While I was reading through the 20 poems, yours immediately stood out to me. It was perfect. A little bit funny, a little bit sarcastic, and dancing across the boundary between cynical and harsh without turning into the latter. I enjoyed the contrast between the lightness of the diction and the heaviness of the themes. You wrote about love and its fleeting nature without making the reader feel weighed down and discouraged from any future romantic commitments. Your warning of love was hidden in this short sonnet refusing to write a poem about love for a friend’s wedding. The writing is unique, alluding to a past trauma involving love or just the simple fact that love doesn't deserve its own poem, seeing as we are all just specks of dust in the universe. Captivated by the lack of detail and explanation, I read and re-read your poem attempting to find why you wrote this sonnet instead of a sappy love poem for your friend Carmen. It would have been easy to produce a simple love poem, Heaven knows there are plenty of examples out in the realm of creative writing already. But you did not. You chose, instead to recognize the vastness of the world and comparatively, love’s insignificance.
“Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding” was my favorite, although I cannot relate to it. I am 17 years old and know nothing of love. No one my age really does. The frontal lobes of our brains aren’t even fully developed, so how can we be expected to understand concepts as intricate and delicate as love? To me, love is a daunting idea. Giving myself to one person for the rest of my life seems incomprehensible at my young age, but your poem helped. It is comforting to know that adults such as yourself don’t have love figured out either. That even as I grow older, love will always be too big a concept to fully understand, much less articulate into the form of a poem.
Although this started out as an assignment for my class, Mrs. Fennelly, I am truly glad I got to read your poem and discover your other poetry. “Ode to Butter” is another one of my new favorites. I can relate to it as I, too, was raised in a private, Christian school and it seems, suffered some of the same consequences of that style of upbringing, but this letter is not about the shared experiences of our teenage years, it is about my looking to you and your poetry and
your unique outlook on love for an odd sense of comfort. So I will conclude this letter by thanking you. Thank you for writing “Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding”. Thank you for not giving in and writing another sappy love poem. Thank you for being a strong, female poet and writing poetry that girls like me can read and enjoy. Thank you for helping spark a new interest in my life, one I hope to carry throughout my college career and to adulthood. Thank you.
Blessings,
Anni
From Mackenzie, Grade 10
Dear Beth Ann Fennelly,
Hello, my name is Mackenzie and I’m a Sophomore at Biddeford High School in Maine. I'm writing to you in regards to your piece, “Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding”. I am doing this for a school project, being completely honest I chose your poem at random. Sure, I had an idea of which poems on our class list I didn’t want to pick, but I'm not a fan of poetry so it was hard for me to connect and find a piece that interested me. After I read through your poem multiple times and pushed my heavily biased view of poetry aside I realized A: poetry is not my enemy and B: I related to your poem.
As a teenage girl the idea of love and marriage is one of the things that has repeatedly been force-fed to me through the media and society since I was a kid; however, being a child of divorced parents has torn down the joyful facade that clouds marriage. I enjoyed your poem because the way I interpreted it was similar to how I see marriage. To me, marriage is just a way for people to feel secure in their relationships, and I feel your poem also expressed the same doubts in marriage. My favorite lines of the poem are also the lines I relate to the most, “I’ve listened to the songs of the galaxy. Well, Carmen, I would rather give you your third set of steak knives than tell you what I know.” The first line to me means that you have seen or maybe felt the effects of a bad marriage and you have chosen to adhere to those warning signs. I think my parents’ divorce would be my “songs of the galaxy”, I’ve seen how a bad marriage affected them and how it affected me. I knew my parents were going to get divorced so it wasn’t a surprise. It was their fighting that affected me the most, the people that were supposed to love each other the most in the world didn’t, which was weird for me to see. I liked the second line because I felt it added some humor to the poem, and I love steak. I don’t talk about my parents’ divorce very much, and if I do I usually make jokes about it. Personally, I believe it's better to let people laugh with you about a situation than have them feel bad for you.
Furthermore that same line placed a lot of imagery in my head, “I’ve listened to the songs of the galaxy.” This line could be understood in a million ways; it holds a lot of symbolism. I’ve already talked about one of my interpretations of it, and although this may sound bizarre this line makes me think of Marvel movies. My parents could barely stand being in the same house together let alone sitting at the same table for over an hour, so oftentimes I would see a movie with only one of them. I remember the first Marvel movie I watched was Guardians of the Galaxy, I was with my mom and I did not want to go at all. Despite this I absolutely loved the movie, so much so I asked my dad if we could go see it together. I was obsessed with this movie, I loved the soundtrack, the characters, the actors, everything about it. From then on I got to see all the Marvel movies twice in theaters, which I was definitely not complaining about. My Dad and I don’t agree on much but the soundtrack to this movie was also something we could put on and enjoy together. This line to me means to be very cautious when in love, and reminds me of listening to songs from a movie about space criminals fighting a purple and blue dude with my Dad. Quite the contrast, but that is something I am learning to enjoy about poetry because one line could make you think of a million things.
Your poem made me think, feel, and imagine many things. One line that really stuck out to me was, “For three nights I’ve lain under glow-in-the-dark stars I’ve stuck to the ceiling over my bed.” This line overall makes me think of my childhood since recently I’ve been noticing how little of it my peers and I have left. More specifically it reminds me of my childhood best friend's room. She had the glow-in-the-dark stars above her bed too, I remember counting them as I fell asleep in her room during sleepovers. However, just like the stars above her bed, our friendship faded. There is a certain heartache you get when you realize you have said goodbye to who you used to be and to those who made you who you were. Despite the constant longing I feel to be as careless as a child again I am growing happy with who I am.
Originally I had some questions about this poem and some lines and what they mean to you, but while writing my first paragraph and referencing your poem repeatedly I have come up with even more. First I would like to ask, is this written from your point of view? If so, what are your feelings towards marriage and how has marriage changed you? Another question I have is about the last line, I had no idea what a Pinto was till I read your story, was there any reason behind the decision to include this car in your story? You mention stars twice in this short poem so what is their purpose in this story? In the beginning when they are first mentioned they seem to help give guidance and at the end, they are portrayed as something that sees people as weak.
While writing this letter I have found a new appreciation for poetry. Your poem is something I unexpectedly related to and found comfort in. I remember complaining to my mom about poetry just the other night and how I wished poems would just say what they meant. I think this is now my favorite part about poetry, I love how the lack of directness has allowed me to think about a wide range of things. The ideas just kept coming and coming which wouldn’t have happened without your amazing poem. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this letter and I hope you have been safe and healthy through this pandemic.
Sincerely,
Mackenzie