Dear, Sincerely

Dear, Sincerely is an exploration into the relationship between the Self, the collective We, and the cosmos, as well as the murky division that separates one from the other. These interconnections, are also central to Elizabeth Bishop’s work, and one of her poems in particular (“In the Waiting Room”) was particularly influential to this work.  

An approach that Hernandez uses to investigate these interconnections is the epistolary poem.  Some of the epistolaries in the collection pins the Self to the speaker, whereas others place a different speaker at the front of the stage, turning the tables on the Self: the addressee has now become the addressed.  This approach has evolved into situations in which two or more speakers are communicating in a single poem.