Postcards
for Donald Evans
Arthur Solway
You are thinking about imaginary postcards
from imaginary places,
small islands
where you first notice the postage stamps,
the postmarks
and dates of cancelation.
Never more than a few lines:
In one hand you rattle a tambourine,
and in the other an abacus.
These are your instruments.
These are your bones.
Then one day you return to that distant cliché
about your face on the moon.
You are thinking about imaginary postcards
from imaginary places,
small islands
where you first notice the postage stamps,
the postmarks
and dates of cancelation.
Never more than a few lines:
In one hand you rattle a tambourine,
and in the other an abacus.
These are your instruments.
These are your bones.
Then one day you return to that distant cliché
about your face on the moon.
Arthur 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.
About the work: “ “Postcards” like many of my poems over the years—and poems I am most drawn to generally—has multiple points of reference. I also have what some might call a philatelic fetish: I have always adored postage stamps like intimate portraits or miniature landscapes, and postmarks from far flung places. As a lifelong traveler, too, I count myself to be among those who still make writing letters, sending cards and notes a part of daily life. Offering just enough space for truncated thoughts, “Postcards” is my communiqué from somewhere yet uncharted or completely off the map, a solitary, reclusive province; its speaker a castaway. The poem’s dedication is to Donald Evans, an American artist (1945–1977), who was known for creating hand-painted postage stamps of fictional countries. Evans died in a fire in the Netherlands in 1977.”
About the work: “ “Postcards” like many of my poems over the years—and poems I am most drawn to generally—has multiple points of reference. I also have what some might call a philatelic fetish: I have always adored postage stamps like intimate portraits or miniature landscapes, and postmarks from far flung places. As a lifelong traveler, too, I count myself to be among those who still make writing letters, sending cards and notes a part of daily life. Offering just enough space for truncated thoughts, “Postcards” is my communiqué from somewhere yet uncharted or completely off the map, a solitary, reclusive province; its speaker a castaway. The poem’s dedication is to Donald Evans, an American artist (1945–1977), who was known for creating hand-painted postage stamps of fictional countries. Evans died in a fire in the Netherlands in 1977.”
The Art
About the art: Arthur Solway writes, “This postcard is from my personal collection of ephemera that I must have picked up some twenty years ago in a flea market or used bookstore. 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. 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.”
View the image on the reverse side of the postcard and read other postcards at our Art of The Postcard feature
