Praisesong For The Postcard -The Toast

The world is full of paper. Write to me.
~Agha Shahid Ali, “Stationery”

Many writers have a complicated relationship with the postcard. At some point you encounter a writing fellowship or contest that requires you to include a self-addressed stamped postcard (the dreaded SASP) to notify you that your application has been received or if it has been rejected. There is a certain kind of poetic cruelty in receiving a rejection addressed to you in your own handwriting. The postcard is the perfect vehicle for said rejection–tiny, sharp and decisive. If only all break-ups could be so clean! Still, I have a huge affection for this category of stationery.

Postcards were the very first pieces of art I could buy for myself. I started with postcards of cute kittens, cartoons with witty sayings and then reproductions of paintings by Picasso, Bearden and O’Keefe. The postcard was the only piece of art in the price range for a dreamy kid. I brought home postcards from class trips and family vacations as souvenirs. When I returned home I would tack the postcards to a corkboard or tape a card to my notebook to travel beyond my Memphis neighborhood. I started to collect picture postcards of people I admired. I still have a copy of Black Writers: A Book of Postcards by Jill Krementz. I bought that book in the 90s when I was just beginning to try to imagine myself as a writer. I only tore a few cards from the book. Toni Morrison at her desk with her arms thrown up to the sky made it to my own writing desk. I sent James Baldwin off with a present to a lover. I still flip through that book of postcards several times a year, my fingertips grazing the torn perforations of the missing cards. The book is long out of print. I should have bought a spare.

My friend F. pointed out that I am always building altars. I had never thought of these groupings as such, but postcards are almost always a part of my ad hoc sacred spaces. Postcards are everywhere in my home: on my bookshelf, on the entry table tucked behind the incense holder, tucked among my jewelry. Right now there are postcards of musicians, artists and political figures affixed to my refrigerator with magnets. I do send an occasional picture postcard through the mail, but they mostly provide a portal to my dreams.

I’m not really an impulse shopper, but last year I was beset by a kind of fever during one of those flash sales where the clock ticks down to zero. The object of my obsession was a set of Crane’s correspondence cards in a cool celadon. The lot of 100 cards felt like an investment, a commitment to becoming the kind of elegant person who dashes off a postcard instead of sending a text message. I imagined my cool green cards appearing in the mailboxes of my friends and becoming a kind of signature. Whereas my old picture postcards were about the ephemeral land of dreams and potential, these new postcards were about the vulnerable space of now.

I once wrote to my friend S. that a letter provides a certain kind of safety that isn’t available any other place. What I wanted when I clicked the “buy now” button for those celadon cards is the opposite of that privacy, that safety. For me, the small, comely postcard is the very symbol of vulnerability. With postcards, the sender is exposed. The sentiment expressed is on display for each person it encounters on the way to its final destination. The postcard journeys without the protection of an envelope at the mercy of the weather, overstuffed mailbags and manipulation by hands and machines. How easy it is to forget that the postcard is just paper, after all. What a wonder that something so small, so fragile, could travel so far and endure.

I can only hope to journey so bravely, so well.

*This piece is partly a response to this article “The Postcard vs. the Future” that heralded

the demise of the postcard.

Jamey Hatley is a native of Memphis, Tennessee who tries to make a little magic every day.

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ehmgeebee 122p · 589 weeks ago

This is beautiful- I have collected postcards my whole life, and I still treat them as art that I can afford. Thank you, Jamey!

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1 reply · active 589 weeks ago

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jameyhatley 6p · 589 weeks ago

Thank you so much! I didn't realize all the feelings I had about postcards until I wrote this piece!

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Es_Petal 120p · 589 weeks ago

I have a wall full of postcards!

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1 reply · active 589 weeks ago

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jameyhatley 6p · 589 weeks ago

Gorgeous!

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zizzivivizz 103p · 589 weeks ago

Postcards are pretty much the only souvenir I buy when I travel. I always buy some to mail to friends, and some to keep for myself--and I too have a treasured book of cards from which I've sent only a couple. I think they're the best kind of happy mail surprise (well, I guess barring happy mail surprises that contain money? No, maybe better even than that). There's something freeing in writing a postcard, I think, and it comes from the vulnerability of having your words on display to postal employees and neighbors and visitors and anyone else whose eyeballs are in range. It's the knowing that your message will be seen, and sending it anyway. That, to me, is why postcards are made of magic.'

That, and they can be really pretty.

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jameyhatley 6p · 589 weeks ago

Yes! I feel happier about the prospects for the postcard now. I was inspired by this article that said the postcard was "endangered."

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literarysara 119p · 589 weeks ago

Lovely. I love postcards. I don't send them nearly as often as I mean to, and I don't receive many except from my mom, so I wind up doing almost the opposite of postcard business with them and distributing them at parties for friends to write valentines to one another or to play Dirty Napkin on the back.

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elsamac 121p · 589 weeks ago

Just a few days ago, I opened a Facebook tab, intending to post a quick message to a distant friend, the Hey, I was just thinking of you and [sweet thing] you did for me a few years ago kind of message.

Then I stopped, pulled out a box of postcards I keep on hand, and wrote the message there instead. It takes the same amount of time, a moment's more thought, and will likely feel like a brighter, bigger thank-you to the recipient.

I'm a big believer in postcards.

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jameyhatley 6p · 589 weeks ago

Fantastic!

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Evelyn N. Alfred · 589 weeks ago

I love this. I did this poetry postcard challenge a while back and I kept all the ones I received and it was a joy to see them in the mailbox. I still have the one you sent me too. :)

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mommiejonesing 0p · 589 weeks ago

Such a beautiful ode to postcards. Nice.

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donkeywork 94p · 589 weeks ago

"What a wonder that something so small, so fragile, could travel so far and endure." Love this, and the way they gather fingerprints and rain mars the ink along the way. Beautiful piece.

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literarysara 119p · 587 weeks ago

Coming back to announce that my New Year's resolution is to update my address book and send valentines, birthday cards, silly greetings, and anything else I have in my stationery box. Thanks for the inspiration.

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danielvarnado 14p · 573 weeks ago

Post cards with certain features that are capable of generating curiosity among people are surely going to attract mass audience. I still remember some of the post cards that were exclusively designed to promote some kind of business as part of direct mail marketing strategy of those particular companies. Go through this link http://www.troimail.com/services/commercial-print... so as to get an idea about what direct mail marketing deals with and I strongly believe that post cards play an important part in promoting business via direct mail marketing.

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Praisesong For The Postcard

ByJamey Hatley

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