Make the Mailbox Interesting Again

Although August may have ended in a strictly prosaic, calendar-based sense for most folks, August popped up today in my mailbox and may yet linger into the back end of September. If that sentence made sense, congratulations, Harry (or Sherry), you're a poet!

Postcards received from all over the country and beyond during August Poetry Postcard Fest 2018.
I am impressed with the postcards, the poems, and the fact that the lighting is such that you can't see the cat hair on the blanket. Bob loves this blanket. We call it the Mama Blanket because every time he climbs on top of it, he purrs loudly and kneads it before lying down. There are a LOT of white hairs on Mama Blanket. She is well loved.

For those who have never PoPo'd, August Poetry Postcard Fest is in its twelfth year. Organized by Paul Nelson of Seattle, it gathers people from all over the world who are willing to commit to writing spontaneous poems to strangers every day for a month.

Because these are poets we're talking about, the concept of "month" is somewhat loosely defined (in fact, the group's first anthology is called "56 Days of August"). You can start early--and people do--and you can go long--and people do. Some people write just to the others on their list so as to write 31 poems; others do "bonus" poems to people they know from other groups or respond to postcards they especially like.

This is my fourth year to PoPo. By now, I have a strategy. All year long, I add to my collection of postcards. My mother and a friend have donated old ones they found while cleaning out photo albums. I pick up free ones wherever I can (such as postcards advertising books at poetry festivals or readings, one from a Typewriter Tarot table, one from a hotel in Maine). And my favorite junk shop in Jefferson, TX, has a corner cabinet full of vintage postcards, some of which are as much as 80 years old.

As soon as the lists come out, I address and stamp my postcards, then place them in order on my bookcase, with the bonus postcards on top. Then the fun begins. The day before, I pull off the top postcard and put it on my nightstand where I can see it and think about it throughout the day. The next morning, I write. Mostly, it's the first thing I think about when I look at the image.

Sometimes, they're inspired by what's going on in the world. This postcard (from my 1989 vacation with Mother to Washington State) reflects my sorrow about the unkindness in the world.

Sometimes, as in this one, written the day after my 47th birthday, the reflections are more personal.

Meanwhile, my mailbox blooms with postcards from all over. Sometimes, I'll get one a day for a while, then none for a while, then a whole clump of them at once. 

Everyone has their own approach, creates their own structure and meaning to the festival. In a way, you get 31 different PoPo festivals each year, one for each person who writes. Some poets choose a theme. Some don't. Some buy postcards on eBay, while others illustrate, paint, make collages, or cut out postcard-shaped pieces of cereal boxes.

This year, six of the poets went political. A vintage postcard of cowboys on the range provoked a bald question about the border wall. On the back of an image of a New Orleans cemetery was a found poem containing quotes from the Washington Post.

Three poets wrote love poems so raw reading them felt like opening someone else's mail (even though they were addressed to me), one on the back of a hand-drawn bottle of kisses.

Five poets gave me snapshots of their daily lives. On the back of an art print was a quote from a fortune cookie. Turning over Niagara Falls revealed the domestic scene of melting butter dripping with the rain.  Another poet reminisced fondly about her sister in a red dress, inspired by the red blooms of flowers, while another asserted that the old boats that wait for you by the shore are the best kind of boats to sail.

Some of my favorite postcards were haiku, beautifully accompanied by hand drawn or painted illustrations. One poet accompanied a dark Whistler portrait of a woman with a vibrant poem about Tibetan monks creating sand mandalas--a powerful juxtaposition of attachment and nonattachment, of the material and the spiritual. 

My absolute favorite, a post card of a colorful Japanese print, contained a stunning poem typewritten with a fuzzy lowercase g that captures the subtle tenderness in the world that manifests in everything from the flow of rivers to the purring of a cat. It starts with dawn and ends with hope, and that, really, is what poetry is about, isn't it?

It may be September, but I'm not giving up on August just yet. One more postcard will go out in this week's mail, and I'm still hoping for more to come my way.