Dear Elizabeth

Between 1947 and 1977 Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop exchanged more than four hundred letters. Cataloging the composition of their poems, their travel and daily routines, the pyrotechnics of their romantic relationships, and the profound affection they had for each other, these missives are the most intimate record of both poets and one of the greatest correspondences in American letters.

Sarah Ruhl is one of the most lauded and produced playwrights working today, with plays beloved for their unembarrassed lyricism, casual surrealism, and naked emotional force. In Dear Elizabeth, Ruhl attempts the impossible: adapting Lowell and Bishop's thirty-year correspondence into a stage play. And she succeeds brilliantly, re-embodying the letters and poems in human voices, elegantly suggesting the poets' lives outside of the letters, and poignantly depicting the emotional closeness and geographical distance that defined their thirty-year relationship. Dear Elizabeth offers a reading experience as engaging as a live performance, one that will entrance anyone curious about the lives of these legendary poets.