4 ideas
For a writer who published almost nothing, the private letter was the actual distribution channel: poems went out one reader at a time, inside notes, to a chosen audience. Seen this way, circulation by hand is a deliberate form of publication rather than a failure to publish, and each copy is fitted to the person who receives it.
A poem enclosed with a flower, a cake, or a condolence becomes part of a social exchange rather than a freestanding text. Its meaning depends on the object and the occasion, so the same lines can read as consolation, thanks, or flirtation depending on what came with them and who received them.
Three passionate drafts addressed to 'Master' were found among Dickinson's papers, never sent, with no recipient identified despite generations of scholarly guessing. Because the addressee is missing, readers fill the gap with their own theories, and a letter whose recipient is unknown ends up addressed, in effect, to anyone who reads it.
Because the letters and enclosed poems are mostly undated, editors must reconstruct their order from handwriting and internal clues. Any chronological arrangement is therefore an interpretation, and the story of a writer's development that it tells is partly an editor's argument.