Charles Simic on the Lost Art of Postcard-Writing

Over at The New York Review of Books blog, Charles Simic laments the lost art of writing postcards. We've long felt postcards—brief, striking, image-dependent—have more than a little in common with poetry, so we sat up straight in our chairs and had a read.

Simic begins:

Until a few years ago, hardly a day would go by in the summer without the mailman bringing a postcard from a vacationing friend or acquaintance. Nowadays, you’re bound to get an email enclosing a photograph, or, if your grandchildren are the ones doing the traveling, a brief message telling you that their flight has been delayed or that they have arrived. 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.

Then, a bit of extrapolation:

Once they find the right card, they are faced with the problem of what to write on the other side. A conventional greeting won’t do. A few details about the trip and an opinion or two about the country they are visiting are okay, but even better is to come up with something clever, since every postcard is written with a particular person in mind. No doubt, one writes differently to one’s friends than to one’s parents, who always fear the worst when one is away. Thus, it’s tempting, when one sits down to send news home, to do the unconventional and use the small space allotted for writing to have a little fun:

Dear Mom and Dad,

We lost our last penny and maxed our credit cards in Las Vegas and have been hitchhiking ever since, spending a night in jail at times so we could avail ourselves of whatever local cuisine the law enforcement provides in Texas. A priest arrested for drunken driving who shared our cell recently told us that we look like a couple of early Christian martyrs, you’ll be happy to hear.

The Newlyweds

And, after reflecting on the saddest postcard he ever found, Simic concludes:

So, dear reader, if you happen, on your daily rounds, to come across in a coffee shop or a restaurant some poor soul sitting alone over a postcard and visibly struggling with what to write, take pity on him or her. They are the last of a species, and are almost certainly middle aged or elderly, already nervous and worried about all the problems older people face in this country. But this may be a moment of respite for them, as they sit there, happily licking a twenty-nine cent stamp and looking out to see if they can spot a mailbox in the street, to send what may turn out be the last card they will ever write, this one with a picture of your beautiful town or city, with a message that might be interesting or downright embarrassing to read, but most assuredly will be welcomed by its unknown recipient, either in the next state or across many time zones on some other continent and place you and I can’t even begin to imagine.