On the love of postcards

"Wish you were here."

I have been collecting postcards ever since I was a child. I still have some that I got on trips to Hayward, Wisconsin where we went on vacation with my grandparents. There is something about the form that seems poetic to me. On one side of a postcard, there is an image. On the other, one writes a brief, personal message to a recipient, to whom the card is sent. The text you write is limited by the space the card affords, and the whole message you write is exposed to anyone who might handle the card along the way, as opposed to being sealed in an envelope. Does the mail carrier read postcards? Perhaps they do, so maybe postal carriers are the unintended recipients of the messages we write on postcards. This arrangement seems a little like the circumstances of lyric poems, many of which are directly addressed to particular people, but which can be read by all, making the experience a bit like eavesdropping, or like reading a postcard not intended for you. Private and public, bound by space, offering an image meant to evoke a place, postcards document travel, evoke distant places, and express longing— “Wish you were here.”

Whenever I travel, I am on the lookout for postcards. I send them to friends and family, but I also send them to myself. I will write impressions of a new city, or describe something I see. Sometimes these descriptions shape themselves into short poems, or poem-fragments. When I return from the trip, the cards are there as a surprise, a memory, and sometimes as parts of poems that will grow into more complete compositions.

Recently, I started making postcards when I travel. These are made from found materials—a bakery box, packing material—and I add images and fragments of things I acquire along the way. These have been images from tourist brochures, receipts, menus, flyers which I then collect and collage onto cards.

For all of you reading this who are paid subscribers, I’d like to send you one of my cards. These may be a “trash postcard,” which is what I call those I make from found things, or the card may be one from my collections which I have altered or adorned in some way.