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Recently, I received a postcard from a friend I have not seen for five years. The postcard message was in the form of a short poem. A postcard has a perfect little square for a poem. You probably have read epistolary poems in the form of letters. Edward Hirsch defines the form: "The letter poem is addressed to a specific person and written from a specific place, which locates it in time and space. It imitates the colloquial familiarity of a letter, though sometimes in elaborate forms.
A few well-known letter poems are Ezra Pound’s adaptation of Li Po, “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” (1915) and Auden’s “Letter to Lord Byron” (1937). These poems are not like actual letters because they are not addressed to just its recipient; but are always
meant to be overheard by a future reader."
Although a postcard poem is similar to the letter form, it is both shorter and written in a different style.The poem "Postcard from the Heartbreak Hotel" by John Brehm opens with a play on a classic postcard meme:
"Wish you were here instead of me."
Though not a poem, a postcard from the poet Seamus Heaney briefly and humorously rejects a request to be a judge for one of the Academy of American Poets poetry competitions. Though he did not use intentional line breaks, the margin of the card created breaks - much like a prose poem. I am taking the liberty of giving his message line breaks.
“Since Purgatory has disappeared
as a concept —
a place or state of temporal punishment -
mankind has been attempting to replace it,
and judging poetry competitions
comes high on the list of substitutions.”
Since this month's call for submissions is not about a topic but about a form, I chose a poem that would fit a postcard, but it also seems like it would work as a postcard message. In "Solstice in Truro" by Joshua Weiner, my teacher-student mind connects solstices to school years and semesters. The summer solstice in June was sometimes the last day of school for me in my K-12 years. Summer vacation! The winter solstice was the end of a marking period or the end of a college semester. A short break and then into the new year and a new term.
Weiner says it is a June solstice, but it could easily be the December solstice starting winter. Truro is a Cape Cod town near where I had stayed for several weeklong poetry workshops in Provincetown on the Cape's tip. I can imagine the tides and restless sand. A summer solstice is the longest day of the year when the Sun "pauses" for a moment before shifting direction. But then there is the sudden entry of his grandfather into the poem. Those two final lines in this 2023 poem, hit me when I read them with the today's news reports from the war in Ukraine and the sad winter prospects for that country.
Your task this month is to write a poem that can fit on a postcard. It should address someone specific, living or dead. If we would recognize the person's name (a historical figure, a celebrity, maybe a famous poet), you might mention it, but it might also just suggest the recipient. Very often postcard messages also mention or suggest the place where the sender is writing.The shortness of the postcard as a form encourages us to write down only the most vivid and essential details of what we are trying to say -- which makes the writing of postcards rather akin to the writing of poems.
Born in Boston in 1963, Josh Weiner grew up in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. He graduated from Northwestern University in 1985, and then entered UC Berkeley, and received a PhD in 1998. Along the way, he served as the Writing Coordinator for three years at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.
Of this poem, he has said,"‘Solstice in Truro’ is one of those poems that just slips out and finds its final form very quickly, in an attempt to respond to my immediate world of sensation. One line led to another, pretty much in the order in which they appear. The emergence of my grandfather in the final lines, and the war in Ukraine, too, was a discovery I wasn’t looking for. I had been reading a lot of Sung and Tang Dynasty poems, classical poems, over the previous few years, mostly in Red Pine’s translations. I think you can hear the influences of line and image in what I wrote.”
Josh lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, the novelist Sarah Blake, and two sons, and teaches literature and poetry workshops at University of Maryland, College Park, where he is Professor of English.
His website is joshuaweiner.com
CHRISTINA
Winter has arrived but no snow, so the woods you loved
are still showing autumn though without foliage.
The trail is covered with fallen leaves,
deer are browsing unconcerned,
a rabbit froze in place on the hillside
as I passed this morning thinking it was invisible.
I sent this message to you as I passed your place -
your ashes now four seasons into the earth
where the snowdrops I planted will burst through
any snow and greet me next spring.
Wish you were here.
Lily Hana Hayashi
THERE, BUT FOR FORTUNE
Hardy moonlight sonatas,
serious and perspicacious,
fuel intricacies in the conscious-
ness of my anonymous love for
you and that something about you
which drives the hidden highways
of your anguished love for me.
R. Bremner
THAT PICTURE
That picture of you two,
two generations reaching for each other.
Two baldies, your hair coming in, his gone.
Two sets of stubby fingers,
our lot, my dear boy.
You weren’t a year in that picture;
he was over sixty. I’m older than
he was then, balding quickly,
with one hand still reaching
for each of you.
Rob Friedman
POSTCARD
You came to me, Erato, like the wind,
But left, one morning, with the rain,
And ever since I’ve waited, waited,
For you to return, for life to start again,
Here in my study, staring at the screen.
Rob Miller
TO A PROVINCETOWN FINE ARTS WORK CENTER WRITING FELLOW
I love your verbs. I love your adverbs.
I love your abs. The musculature
of your guts. I hate your guts. I applied
for that fellowship, too, but I got
“third alternate.” Which meant if the one
who won the fellowship couldn't make it,
and if the first alternate couldn’t make it,
and if the second alternate couldn’t make it,
well then, I could have it. Needless to say,
I never got it. But I got that I was “third alternate.”
That I got. Anyway, this is just to say
I’ve been reading your book. You send me
to the dictionary, which I love.
Paul Hostovsky
GREETINGS FROM ALOHA LAND
Hi, Sis. It’s Me. You won’t believe what just happened here in the
Front garden of our condo across the boulevard from Ala Moana
Beach. Three white “Just Married” balloons landed in the yard, and
One by one, they all popped. That got me thinking. Half of all
American marriages fail. Will this bride and groom, married the day
After Thanksgiving, driving now down the street, losing white
Balloons along the way, always be grateful for each other? Will their
Love last longer than turkey and sugary sweet potatoes? Or like the
Pilgrims treated the Wampanoag Nation, will they betray the precious gift
Of friendship and part ways? If only the bride, still in her white lace gown,
Would glance up at the two white egrets, soaring above her white
Convertible, the first birds to rise before sunup, the last to conclude
The relentless quest for food. Now, in today’s gloaming, they fly together
Back to their nest in the mangroves, fish, frogs, and lizards in their throats
After hours of searching, ready to cough up their day’s work into their
Babies’ hungry throats, every twilight of their lives. Just like Mom and Dad.
Rose Anna Higashi
HEY SNOWBIRDS!
You guys don’t know what you’re missing
back here in upstate NY’s winter wonder land.
Houses up and down the block, lit up with
Christmas lights, snowshoes in the SUV,
heavy coats, wool hats and mittens.
Truth is, it’s getting mighty cold. So …
Let us know, if you’re still open to a visit.
We looked online and found some flights.
Frank Kelly
A REQUEST FROM POETS TO THE MUSES IN LATE DECEMBER
We are in a liminal space.
An in-between time. The days
after Silent Night and before
Auld Lang Syne. It's a time
of fragmentation. A time of ache.
A solitary time when our wants are
lean and spare—a little sustenance
from the ravens, a little music,
a little rhyme. These three things.
Though rhyme alone would satisfy.
Jo Taylor
APRIL 10, 1912
Three days past Resurrection Sunday
Today there is little to no fanfare
The great ship’s spotlight stolen
by her twin sister’s own maiden voyage
which will be remembered - and I say Amen
It is a ship I command; not attention
Day one and already a near collision
She’s a mighty ship but none mightier than the Atlantic
for the sea has no captain
Onward to Cherbourg, Queenstown, New York City
then home - to my dear Sarah and Helen
Terri J. Guttilla