Postcards from the Dead Letter Office

Dawn Manning’s Postcards from the Dead Letter Office takes the Japanese form of the tanka around the world. Tension persists in the short and long breaths of the form, as well as in the live ants pillaging the body of the dead cat, the specificity of place and the commonness of piano tunes, the moonlight found everywhere, even on laptop screens. Manning’s images are surprising and fresh, visiting all seasons, all new lives, and as many of the dead as possible. Each place these poems visit are enriched by detail and defined by absence, by all we leave unsaid, all we can’t unsay -wracked by everything forgotten or the refusal to speak, haunted by every word uttered, every missive sent to the Dead Letter Office. – Traci Brimhall