Postcard Perdu:The August Poetry Project



by Catherine Giordano

I took a photgraph of the postcards I received.

The August Poetry Project has concluded. I sent 30 postcards and received 20 postcards. The assignment was 31 postcards.  I guess some of my postcards got lost in the mail.  

 

I sent 30 instead of 31 postcards because one of the people on my list was in Ireland. At the beginning of this project I went to the post office and bought 35 34-cent stamps. I looked up the postage for a postcard to Ireland. It was $1.05. I would have had to make a special trip to the post office. I decided if I got a postcard from this person in Ireland, I would make that trip and send one in return. I didn’t get the post-card.   

Most of the post cards I got were regular picture postcards, often with photos depicticting  the state and city of the sender.  Three of them had a hand-drawn picture on them. I knew the sender went to a lot of trouble to do that—I really appreciated that.   

I went to quite a bit of trouble for my postcards. I bought card stock so I could make my own postcards. I used my printer to put a picture on the front on the left; the address was on the right. That left the entire reverse side for my poem. 

 

I had a little bit of an advantage because I used my daily news print poem that I post on my blog News Print Poetry 2012.  I also used the picture that I posted to my blog as the picture for the postcard.

 

No one could doubt that my poems were original poems composed on the day they were sent because they were “ripped from the headlines.” 

The poems were a varied lot on subject matter. Some were great poems that I read over several times to fully appreciate. Some were clever and funny. They were all interesting to read.

 

I hope we have another August Poetry Project next year. 

 

 

P.S.: The title of this piece is a pun on the title of Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost. In French, the title is Paridis Perdu.

 

9/10/12: I got one more postcard on Saturday. 

August Poetry Project--New Thoughts

Everyday I send out the news print poem of the day.  I make my own postcards so I can include the picture.

I've been getting a picture postcard each day.  Some days, the picture and the poem match up,  Today I got a postcard from Seattle Washinton.  It was a picture of the city with Mount Rainier in the backgroud.  The poem was about Mt. Rainer.

Yesterday, I got a postcard with a Texas license plate on it.  There was a clever poem about the trials of moving from one city to another city, both in Texas.

It's fun sending the poems and fun getting the poems.  And maybe the recipients of my poems will want to read more and they will go to http://newsprintpoetry2012.blogspot.com

I'm always excited to get new readers and followers.

August Poetry Project (Con't)

I received two more postcards with poems on Saturday. 

One of the post cards was very cleverly done.  It was cut from a cereal box, and it had been carefully postioned to show a delicious looking spoonful of cereal.  What a good idea--Using the cardboard packaging from a pantryitem to create a picture postcard.

Suggestion:  If you do this, up the cleverness factor a notch or two by writing a poem to match the picture. There's a lot to work with in this picture--the silver sppon, the flakes and oats, the raisens, the mikly white milk and the words "Great Tasting & Heart Healthy."

On of the suggestions for the poetry project is have your poem answer one of the poems you have received. Since the person who sent this card is towards the end of my list, I'll have plenty of time to come up with a poem that matches the picture.

Postcards, Pictures, and Poems.

Postcards from the August Poetry Project

I signed up for the August Poetry project. (See the 7/25/12/ post.) I got a head start and began mailing
out a poem a day to the people on my list at the end of July. Yesterday, I mailed my seventh card, but I still hadn't received any. I started to think that maybe people weren't keeping their commitment. Today I got three postcards, each with a nice poem on it. Not just plain postcards, but each with a great picture on the front.

I looked at the pictures and the poems, and it was like two of the poems had switched cards. One was light verse about how the internet dominates our lives and it had a picture  of a 1941 movie poster for the film "The Monster and the Girl." 

The other card had a touching poem with a wry twist at the end about a friend who died from Lou Gehrig's disease. This one had a picture of the famous New Yorker cartoon, depicting two dogs at a computer and captioned "On the internet, nobody knows you are a dog."

Now clearly, the dog cartoon belonged with the internet poem and the dying-of-a-terrible-disease poem belonged on the Monster card. (The analogy is that the disease is the monster and the girl is the writer of the poem.)

Weird coincidence, don't you think?

I liked all three of my cards and all three poems.  I'll be rushing to the mailbox tomorrow morning.

Read the poems at http://newsprintpoetry2012.blogspot.com

The August Poetry Project

My first postcard poem was Simple Food

I joined the August Poetry Project.  I have a list of 31 people in addition to myself.  Every day in August, I will write a new poem, put the poem on a postcard, and send the poem to someone on that list, a different person each day.  At the end of the month, I should have sent, and received, 31 postcards just like the other people on the list.

This is a natural for me since I write a new poem everyday for the news print poetry project, that is, blog. 

I heard that some peple fancy things up a bit with pictures, so I decided I'd send my poem each day with the picture I have selected to illustrate the poem printed on the front left side of the postcard. A little more work for me because I have to make my own postcards from cardstock instead of using the ones from the post office. 

I don't mind the extra work. I like the idea of sending something special to the people on my list. Who knows? Perhaps they will become followers of my blogs, or at least readers.  Perhaps they will buy one of my books.

I'm really excited to read the poems I will get. I'll keep you posted about how this works out.  A few hundred people are doing it; there are several lists of names. Maybe you will want to do it next year.