‘Letter to a Future Lover’: Peculiar essays urge engagement

Ander Monson's 'Letter to a Future Lover: Marginalia, Errata, Secrets, Inscriptions, and Other Ephemera Found in Libraries” (Graywolf Press, 165 pages, $22) was initially a series of 6-by-9 inch cards. Monson would write a piece responding to something he found in a library book and then insert the card in said book for future readers to find. Many of these brief, odd, exquisite essays directly address the hypothetical reader.

While reading the bound book (which is arranged, for no reason other than that the book needed some organizing principle, with the essays in alphabetical order by title), it was interesting to consider how I might have responded to any given piece had I encountered it in the wild. What would I make, for example, of 'E,” an essay in which the letter e never appears in the text, had I happened upon it in a book about electronics in the Fresno State University Library? It's difficult to know, but intriguing to ponder.

Perhaps I would have followed the author's advice in 'Dear Future Yooper”:

'So take this note home. Write and insert another in its stead. What might you want - or need - anonymously or not - to say to the next reader? To someone you love? To someone you hope one day to be worthy of? Make something of what you're given.”

I don't know that I would have done any of those things, but I can say I found the collected essays full of wordplay, allusions, thoughts both deep and banal and thrilling. Monson opens conversations. 'Letter to a Future Lover” is joyously idiosyncratic while calling out to all of us to engage with the world in our own uniquely personal ways.

Book signing

What: Ander Monson participates in the Mission Creek Festival

Where: Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City

When: 6 p.m. March 31

Cost: Free