After I suggested this title as the June 15, 2023, talk to be given at the Altar/Alter project, I realized that what I meant was more like milagro or folk charm, though one could make the case that poetry postcards are like little sacred planes on which we place our prayers and good wishes for ourselves, our loved ones, our countries/bioregions/watersheds, our pets, all our relations. The details:
What: Postcards as Ofrendas
Where: The Cherry Pit, 2518 E Cherry St, Seattle
When: Thursday, June 15, 2023, 8:30pm
The Recording of the talk is linked here.
The Specifics
Method (spontaneous) Avoid the dodges of discourse.
Allen Ginsberg on generalization and abstraction. In His Own Words.
Charles Olson, from Human Universe:
We have lived long in a generalizing time, at least since 450 B.C. And it has had its effects… on the best of things. Logos, or discourse, for example, in that time, so worked its abstractions into our concept and use of language that language’s other function, speech, seems so in need of restoration that several of us go back to hieroglyphs or to ideograms to right the balance. (The distinction here is between language as the act of the instant and language as the act of thought about the instant.)
But one can’t any longer stop there, if one ever could. For the habits of thought are the habits of action, and here, too, particularism has to be fought for, anew…
What makes most acts-of living and of writing- unsatisfactory, is that the person and/or the writer satisfy themselves that they can only make a form (…a poem, whatever) by selecting from the full content some face of it, or plane, some part. And at just this point, by just this act, they fall back on the dodges of discourse, and immediately, they lose me, I am no longer engaged, this is not what I know is the going-on… It comes out a demonstration, a separating out, an act of classification, and… it has turned false.
Sam Hamill on Epistolary Poetry
The postcard’s multiple levels:
1) The epistle
2) Spontaneous composition
3) Calligraphy
4) Make your own (Examples by Abhaya Thomas, Tim Mateer)
5) Stamps
6) Seriality
7) Intimacy
Write a postcard poem. (Handout)
I love the vision of this event and thank the organizers, Greg, Denny, Amy and Eric for inviting me to be a part of this.
I wish I lived closer. This theme resonates deeply.
I hope to record it. I will mention your awesome cards.
Love this theme! Good works here by all!
I’m so looking forward to this.