Dear L.L.

on attics and basements & Love and other Mysteries

Dear L.L.,

“Maybe you were keeping them in the attic (are there attics in Texas?)”

–L.L. Barkat, Dear Megan

Yes, there are attics in Texas. But what there aren’t—especially in my area of the Texas Hill Country—are basements. That’s because the ground has only a thin layer of soil over deep, deep limestone rock. To put in a basement (or a pool, as my parents did), you have to blow up st*uff.

To write Love and other Mysteries, I had to blow up st*uff. So all these basement-y parts of me in the poems, they were trapped in the rock. Now it’s like a waterfall. I can’t make it stop.

I confessed to John that I’m in love with Erlend, from Kristin Lavransdatter. He bought me another drink and asked me to say more. I confessed to Callie that I wish Fanny Price, in Mansfield Park, would fall for Henry Crawford and get over her cousin, Edmund, who is incapable of loving her as she deserves, and besides, he’s her cousin (ew). Tis my season for love.

Yes, of course I remember our conversation about revamping The Joy of Poetry. This weekend I sold a copy to a woman who had lost her mother a year ago. I think she was drawn in by the word “joy,” and that is a word you gifted me. You are absolutely correct that The Joy of Poetry leads directly into the Joyful Mysteries, and you astutely noticed that the last word of the final poem in Love and other Mysteries is “joyful”—sending us back around bend, ever circling, as with a Rosary.

It means the world to me that your reaction to the collection would be “oh wow, wow, wow—oh.” That, friend, is high praise, especially from someone who knows and lives and breathes poetry as you do.

Many of the poems are this-year new, but some began ten years ago. Some originated in the workshop Callie taught for you. Four are last-minute additions, when I realized what I had and what it needed.

The question implicit in your kind letter is, What happened? I’ll give you the most Joyful answer: singing.

With nostalgia and joy,

Megan

P.S. This is from Christmas Day last year, working with an incredibly gifted young woman named Lindsey. I’m lead, and she’s harmony and haunting piano. The song is a mashup of “What Child Is This” and “Child of the Poor.”