Postcard Poems: an experiment in form

The final challenge over at Khara House’s Our Lost Jungle was to create your own poetic form and write a poem or two using that form. In some ways this was a daunting challenge but after I gave it some thought I realized all poetry forms come out of some poetry writing. The daunting part was Khara, bless her heart, wanted us to write the form and fit the poem to it. I suppose it wouldn’t be a challenge to place the horse before the cart.

I am big on postcards (I’m postcardkris.blogspot.com) so this was a way to combine my lifelong postcard hobby and my poetry pursuits. I’ve written and collected a lot of postcards and written lots of poems on the backs of postcards but never thought of them as postcard poems per say.  This was an opportunity to set out on for some new territory.

Here are my postcard poetry form guidelines. There are seven of them. This seems like a lot but I wanted to incorporate all of Khara’s eight challenges.  If you want a simpler version skip down toward the bottom. I’ve summarized them there.

Postcard Poem

1. A prose poem of not more than 36 words.(rule #5)
2. Consists of three monostich sentences each of 12 words or less and 12 to 18 syllables. (rule #’s 1,5,6)
3. The poem will contain, refer to or mention three elements: 1) some type of travel or destination or means of conveyance, 2) reveal a secret (personal, social or cultural, etc.,) or a humorous truth about yourself or someone else that the addressee does not know, and 3) be an ekphrasis, referring to a real or imagined image postcard image.  .  Here is a list of ekphrastic poetry. (rule #’s 3, 4,7)
4. The first two sentences will be grammatically parallel; the third can be any structure. (rule #,4,7,8.
5. Two of the sentences will have either an internal rhyme, alliteration or end rhyme. (rule #’s 2,6)
6. There must be at least one figure of speech or trope (see list here), metonymy, metaphor, simile, personification, synecdoche, allegory, symbol (to name a few) in the poem. (#6,7)
7.  Finally, the poem must be addressed to a person’s first name (real or imagined) and have a closing. (rule #8)

This may seem like a lot of rules (OK, I admit it is a lot of rules) but it is not so different than writing a postcard message. Hopefully, it will serve as a kind of literary echo of the normal postcard message. The rules should function to enhance the writing and bring forth something out of our poetry compost (Khara’s lost jungle) that may grow into a poem that blooms for us and may hold significance for readers in each season of our lives.

Simple version

If you don’t like these rules, try this. Write a poem of one and no more than three sentences of roughly equal length with a maximum of 36 words total that resembles a postcard greeting. Imagine writing to a loved one (or hated one) back home from an exotic (or boring location) and mention the image on the postcard you are writing on. Use colorful language (figures of speech: metaphor, simile, hyperbole. End with a short closing phrase and your first name (real or imagined). Include a closing phrase with your name if you wish.

The advantage of postcard poetry is that you never can run out of inspiration. All you need is a postcard and some imagination. Here is an example.

Julia,
Here’s Picasso’s two hands with flowers. You and I now know love is never that bright or simple.
I’ll sign the papers before we get to Vegas.
Don’t look back, Kris

Now, it’s your turn. Try your hand at a postcard poem. Let me know how it comes out.

The grieving muscle; a challenge prose poem

I’m sailing well into the month of August’s poetry challenges. I’m doing two this month that requires a poem a day, plus another two or three on one challenge once a week. These end up being drafts of works I may or may not take up later but so far I’m keeping pace.

This weeks challenge over at Khara Houses’ blog, Our Lost Jungle, is to write a prose poem, that curious hybrid of poetry and prose. I’ve written many over the years, most in the form of letter poems. I have a provisional title for a book and a good portion of the “letters” written for them. I hope to make these the basis of my second book of poems after publishing my first next year.

Another related form of the prose poems, another of my personal favorites, is the postcard poem. I’m doing a challenge over at August Postcard Poetry Fest(ival) blog to write a postcard poem a day sponsored by Striped Water Poets and hosted this year by Brendan McBreen. The only requirement for a postcard poem is that it fit on a postcard. To date I’ve sent out 15 poems and received eight. That’s a pretty good average, according to Brendan.

Below is one prose poem I wrote for Khara’s challenge this week. The other, on a lighter topic I posted on Khara’s blog comments. As you will see, my prose poems are prosy, letter like. I imagine speaking to an intimate friend, once capable of following my tortured thoughts and feelings. I like this voice because it gives me a platform and some leeway to speculate on a variety of subjects and themes.

Finding the grief muscle

To die or not to die is not the question. The questions don’t matter since most are easily answered and the complicated ones we study to be entertained for a time and only after a hard time come to learn they were the wrong questions. Like the one about what it feels like to be dead, which cannot be known, since the evidence is scanty or suspect — being based on near-death accounts, which by definition are not death experiences, only approximates, mere near misses with death, not death itself. No, the only questions are to the living, those who clean blood from concrete or carpet, those who empty the clothes closets, those who must sort through favorite toys, those who must ponder death as they lay dying and survivors who carry the additional, seemingly intolerable burden, of months and sometimes years of grief  — an experience always soaked in the rain of their imagination which only prolongs the inevitable day of liberation, spending their days within an encapsulated heart, setting up shop in a back alley with the freeway roaring like hell overhead, dutifully producing. We grievers cannot miss the important practice of watching through a blur children play or couples at a fountain sharing themselves or the faint stars appearing in the opposite sky at sunset. These signs, these twilight stars are stars of life and death, true avengers, like a child saviors born in the midst of grief and death, small beginnings, lights given us to resurrect our experience of innocence, a new muscle capable of lifting us off the shore of our sorrow each day, so we may once again fly into song with the sweet dying people who remain.