On Postcards

I am much more of an advocate of letters, mostly because I am, if nothing else, a prolific writer. Notecards freak me out a little bit (except for thank you notes). Postcards hold, for me, an unimaginably small space to write in. Twitter is a stultifying proposition. I have a twitter account, but I have never written a twitter (aside from my blog twitters, which rarely, if ever, contain the proper number of characters).

However, the poet Charles Simic points out the uniqueness of postcards in "The Last Art of Postcard Writing." Since I love nostalgia, I can get on board. Simic writes:

The terrific thing about postcards was their immense variety. It wasn’t just the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal, or some other famous tourist attraction you were likely to receive in the mail, but also a card with a picture of a roadside diner in Iowa, the biggest hog at some state fair in the South, and even a funeral parlor touting the professional excellence that their customers have come to expect over a hundred years. Almost every business in this country, from a dog photographer to a fancy resort and spa, had a card. In my experience, people in the habit of sending cards could be divided into those who go for the conventional images of famous places and those who delight in sending images whose bad taste guarantees a shock or a laugh.

... unlike letters, cards require a verbal concision that can rise to high level of eloquence: brief and heart-breaking glimpses into someone’s existence, in addition to countless amusing and well-told anecdotes.

Hopkins and Myrrh and Elizabeth Bishop all do the postcard proud. I am an avid buyer of postcards at museum gift shops, but I can never bring myself to part with them.