“In old Arabic poetry love, song, blood, and travel appear as four basic desires of the human heart and the only effective means against our fear of death. Thus travel is elevated to the dignity of the elementary needs of humankind…. Whatever practical reasons push people out of their homes to seek adventure, travel undoubtedly removes us from familiar sights and from everyday routine… and is a powerful means of inducing wonder. And since poetry is an expression of wondering at things, landscapes, people, their habits and mores, poetry and travel are allied.”
(From Czeslaw Milosz‘s introduction to “Travel” in A Book Of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry.)
I’m not sure the old Arabic tradition would count postcard writing among the basic desires of the human heart — but certainly the feeling of wonder and the urge to express it to another person allies postcard writing with its grander cousins, travel and poetry. Milosz goes on to quote Plutarch quoting an ancient Roman about to depart in tempestuous weather: “To sail is necessary, to live is not. (Navigare est necesse, vivere non est necesse.)” Sailing and postcards are not the same — but if the story is true, that ancient Roman didn’t just think those words, he said them — and in another time and context he might have sent those words sailing on a 3-1/2″ by 5″ postmarked card.
All of which is to say that I have more thoughts on postcards than I could fit in one blog post or postcard itself. (Although anyone who has received a postcard from me can attest to the fact that I am able to cram quite a bit in — shrinking my writing to the edge of legibility, boldly defying “This Side for Message” convention: leaving only a small island of address and a tiny postage atoll.) And whether ancient Roman sailors agree with me or not, I do count the postcard as an additional “effective means against our fear of death.”
So if you feel even a little like I do — here’s a great opportunity to both write and receive poems and postcards (best of all worlds): The Perennial Poetry Postcard Project. Springing from a Postcard Poetry Festival in August of 2007, the basic premise is that you sign up to the list, write an original poem on a postcard and mail it to the address below your name on the list — and then continue the process by moving down the list, shooting for at least one new postcard+poem mailed each week. And if all goes as planned, you will in return receive a weekly poem-postcard from a fellow poet and/or postcard enthusiast somewhere in the world as long as you stay on the list. Lana Ayers and Paul Nelson, the masterminds behind the project, offer this encouragement: “Don’t agonize too much over what you write…. Remember how exciting it is for the person who is eagerly waiting to find a little note from you in her mailbox.” Hurray!
And here are a few other examples of the postcard as literary form or inspirational catalyst:
* “Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard” Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (up now through May 25, 2009). This special exhibition features a selection of the 9,000 picture postcards amassed and classified by the American photographer Walker Evans (1903???1975), as well as some of Evans’ own postcard-format photographs and penny-picture works. From the Met’s description of the exhibition: “The picture postcard represented a powerful strain of indigenous American realism that directly influenced Evans’s artistic development.” From a NY Times review of the show (“Main Street Postcards as Muse” by Roberta Smith): “Nothing comes from nowhere, least of all art. Every body of work has its points of origin, its logic of personal urgency and cultural impetus…” (High fives, postcards!)
* Annie Proulx‘s first novel Postcards uses handwritten postcard messages from the novel’s characters to begin each chapter. In less deft hands this might have been just a clever device — but Proulx’s astute sense of ordinary language allows her postcards to convey the real human desire to communicate as well as the (often heartbreaking) amount we do not say. (And although she doesn’t mention postcards explicitly in her article “Inspiration? Head Down the Back Road, and Stop for the Yard Sales,” I think it would be safe to imagine that they are also on her list.)
* Nancy Willard‘s picture book The Magic Cornfield is a story told through postcards, following the adventures (and misadventures) of Tottem as he makes his way to Minneapolis for his cousin Bottom’s 100th birthday. The book features charming photographs by Willard for the postcard images, real stamps and postmarks from odd and fortuitously named U.S. cities which become part of the story, and a poet’s sensitivity to language appealing to readers of any age. Plus a magical postal drop box that mysteriously appears wherever Tottem goes — no matter how sad or lost he gets — that I hope to find myself one day.
* And last but not least – friends Rachel Kessler and Emily Beyer recently introduced me to Craig Raine‘s wondrously strange riddle-poem “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home.” “Rain is when the earth is television. / It has the property of making colours darker,” the postcard-writer observes — and my view may be forever transformed after reading of Earth’s “mechanical birds with many wings” that are often “treasured for their markings,” especially when the Martian notes, “I have never seen one fly, but / sometimes they perch on the hand.” (O reader – be gentle with these docile creatures.)