The Art of the Postcard
Inverted Syntax Online Issue 1
“THE WORLD BEFORE US IS A POSTCARD, AND I IMAGINE THE STORY WE ARE WRITING ON IT.” ― MARY E. PEARSON
EDITORIAL NOTE
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Featured Postcards
Click each postcard to enlarge
Click each postcard to enlarge
About the featured postcards: These postcards are created on foam-core. The messages are in the images created by the submitter. Recorded on the reverse is Inverted Syntax’s address and the creator’s email. We’ve uploaded one to give you an idea. Click each postcard to enlarge.
Introducing himself as ‘GC', ‘churnage' and an email address, the postcard author writes, “I’ve been a writer longer than I’ve been an artist. My poetry has been published in several publications. Postcards are a way for me to extend my writing into a visual medium. They're like mixed-media haikus.
About the Postcards: “My postcards are like smelling salts for a media-concussed culture. I want people, myself included, to wake the FUCK up. I use surrealism, subversion, juxtaposition, humor, non sequiturs, randomness, questions, among other techniques, to goad / coax / woo viewers out of their waking sleep. Sometimes, I start by collaging cut-out images on a blank postcard canvass. Sometimes, I paint a large piece of foam-core with all kinds of crazy colors and then chop it up into smaller postcard canvasses. Then add words and images, as necessary. Sometimes, I paint over collaged images. I'm still learning and experimenting with different techniques. I started making collaged postcards for family members who were away from home. They responded enthusiastically to these hand-crafted creations, so I kept at it. "
Discover More POSTCARDS
Click each postcard to enlarge
Daniel Staub Weinberg is a Chicago-based artist/activist who also dabbles in postcard art creations. He has been featured in various online journals. Weinberg has held group and solo art shows at: Intuit Center, Awakenings Foundation Gallery, DANK Haus Culture Bridge, and recently Oak Park Art League-Postcards (Oak Park,IL), to name a few. More here https://www.artpal.com/weinbergsart
This postcard's art is by Weinberg. He writes, “My postcard speaks of my thoughts about torture. It ain’t nice and makes us all suffer whether aware or not. Guantanamo is not very democratic.”
This postcard's art is by Weinberg. He writes, “My postcard speaks of my thoughts about torture. It ain’t nice and makes us all suffer whether aware or not. Guantanamo is not very democratic.”
Genevieve Rose Barr is an actor, writer and educator who has been living in Japan and China for the past ten years where she concentrated on writing. Barr has been published in Japan (including winning the Kyoto writing prize), India, England, the US and Canada. Genevieve has recently returned to Australia and has appeared in Welsh director Ray Thomas' stage interpretation of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milkwood, Lally Katz's Neighbourhood Watch and various poetry and playscript readings. Barr also reads as script assessor for the Short and Sweet Theatre Festivals.
Genevieve Rose Barr (Ibid)
Genevieve Rose Barr (Ibid)
Eva Schultz writes, “I'm a diehard fan of time travel stories. I received this post card as a giveaway at a convention years ago and have been saving it for the right story-telling moment. Who is D.? Who is M.? What happens to them? I love leaving the door open for readers to imagine more of their story.”
“The front of the postcard shows my brother, my sister and I playing near an abandoned homestead in Onion Creek, Washington in the spring of 1973. Our parents had recently purchased land, and we lived in a canvas tent while they dismantled this cabin and built another one from old timbers and new logs. The mailbox leaning on the left front of the cabin was installed at the bottom of the mountain, where a long dirt road met the county road.
My poem ‘Inland’ appears on the back of the postcard. It contains details from a dream I had about that time.
The entire piece is sealed with beeswax, an ancient archival material.”
My poem ‘Inland’ appears on the back of the postcard. It contains details from a dream I had about that time.
The entire piece is sealed with beeswax, an ancient archival material.”
Samantha Malay’s poems have been published in The RavensPerch, Sheila-Na-Gig, Burningword Literary Journal, Sky Island, The Sea Letter and Alexandria Quarterly. Her collages have been published in The Grief Diaries, Cahoodaloodaling, Phoebe: A Journal of Literature and Art, Temenos, Chaleur Magazine and Apeiron Review.
Janet is retired, living in Massachusetts, and writing poetry with deceptive simplicity. Sipping a martini, she jokes, “ She can control her facts, but not her fiction.”
Dustin writes, “I am writing a postcard that has a very big place in my heart. My husband and I recently separated. During our time together we traveled to around forty states. Our separation has not been easy; I lost my best friend. I just traveled without him for the first time and I wondered every single day what it would be like to run into him miles away from the things that tore us apart. He always said we would meet again and I still wonder if that is a possibility.”
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Tony Peyser's poems appear regularly in Lighten Up Online, the British journal of comic verse. He had a poem in The Poet’s Quest for God, a 2016 anthology by London-based Eyewear Publishing. He also had poems in The Poetry Writer’s Guide to the Galaxy in 2017 and Dear Mr. President in 2018. This year he participated in Pasadena public radio station KPCC’s Unheard L.A. literary event. He lives with his wife and son in Altadena, California. He writes daily poems about politics on Twitter @tonytonypeyser.
Bill Smith writes, “I love postcards! They convey a picture worth a thousand words, but they only have space for about 50 words (which is all I usually have to say). Years ago, I started gluing additional random images on postcards. Lately, to illustrate our sometimes apocalyptic-seeming times, I’ve recently combined newspaper photos (like this NYT photo of the abandoned bike of a boy killed in Chicago) with verses from an old King James Bible (like this verse from Proverbs about doing no evil to neighbors).”
Sarah Santoni writes, "It was purchased with a dollar worth of pennies."
Kathryn Kruse is a writer who lives in Chicago. She made the postcard in Lisbon out of tourist maps and brochures and such. She knows no greater pleasure than receiving mail.
Meg Freer writes, “I first saw Turner's paintings up close when I was nine and we lived in London, England for a year. My mother was especially fond of Turner, so when the exhibit from the (new) Tate Gallery traveled to Canada, I traveled by train three hours to Toronto to see it and report back to her. I also bought a booklet of postcard reproductions so I could keep sending paintings to her.”
Claire Yspol is a Dundee-based (UK) artist who works with words in various ways. Yspol writes, “It's an artwork I made to leave in places. It mimics a book page - black text on a white background.” More at www.claireyspol.com
Gaëtan Meissner is from Colmar, France
Arthur Solway writes, “Like Charles Simic (or perhaps Joseph Cornell), I have always loved postcards. They are at once immediate, intimate, and yet truncated communiques that can convey all kinds of messages or bring us strange and exotic images. This one is from my personal collection of ephemera that I must have picked up some twenty years ago in a flea market or used bookstore. I have always been amused by its coded and mysterious message from someone who refers to themselves as the chemical properties of water. I haven't a clue as to who the Duke of Gladstone was or might be (after endless searches online), or our mysterious correspondent, code name: 'H2o'. I simply try to imagine what kind of shady colonial business they were conducting or engaged in and still find this brief communique terribly amusing.”
Solway’s poetry and essays have appeared most recently in The London Magazine, Salmagundi, Tri-Quarterly, BOMB, The Antioch Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Tiferet, and The Shanghai Literary Review. He is also a frequent contributor of reviews and cultural essays to Artforum, Frieze, and Art Asia Pacific magazines. A graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, he has been based in Shanghai since 2007.
Solway’s poetry and essays have appeared most recently in The London Magazine, Salmagundi, Tri-Quarterly, BOMB, The Antioch Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Tiferet, and The Shanghai Literary Review. He is also a frequent contributor of reviews and cultural essays to Artforum, Frieze, and Art Asia Pacific magazines. A graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, he has been based in Shanghai since 2007.
Charlene Neely's great-grandchildren still enjoy getting Reindeer Food in their stockings and eating Garden Candy (peas) from their Grandmother's garden. Charlene prefers to sit and write poems.
The postcard drawing is a creation by Glenn Thomas. Thomas is a printer, sculptor, and print maker. Originally from Newark, New Jersey, Thomas has been living and working in the Netherlands since 1970. He has authored five books, The Inner Life of Martin Frost, by Paul Auster and Glenn Thomas (Mark Batty Publishers, 2008), The Painting ( De Plantage Pers, 2008), Book In A Box, and Dialogues of an aging existence, a Graphic novel.
More here: https://www.glennthomas.eu/about.html
More here: https://www.glennthomas.eu/about.html
Kake Huck wants you to buy her book, Murderous Glamour: A Novel in Poems . The book is linked to one identity; the postcard to another.
Pat McCulloch writes, “ I like Japanese art.”
Josh Lefkowitz used to receive postcards from his grandparents when they were traveling and aims to keep this family tradition alive by sending postcards to his nieces and nephew. He also has an ongoing postcard correspondence with his BFF from college, Christina, to whom this one is addressed.
Autumn Toennis currently resides in Bozeman, MT with the love of her life and a menagerie of plants and books in their Brooklyn-esque apartment. She works for Open Country Press, a small, independently-run Montana press.
Julia Klatt Singer is a long-haired, sweater-wearing poet and thief. Her most recent chapbook of poems, Elemental, published by Prolific Press, is available now. Singer writes, “I painted this postcard, thinking about a place I'd been years ago. How the light filled the hollows, and changed everything.”
Caroline Paden is a creative writer and sophomore at a High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, Texas. Paden writes, “The postcard is dedicated to my amazing friend, Avalene, and her pet rabbit, henry. Love you both lots.”
Lowhim is a writer and veteran. Lowhim writes, “Picked a random postcard.”
Stephanie Staab writes from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
