Quotes About Postcards

The following quotes are from Roy Arenella’s essay, “O Postcards!”, which is included in In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing (Impassio Press).

1. “Above all [Daguerre, the inventor of photography] admired the postcard as the supreme expression of art. This was why he was attracted to the new invention.” —Manuel J. Borja-Villel, Brassai: From Surrealist to Art Informel (1993)

2. “By 1902, Eastman Kodak Co. took advantage of the postcard boom by issuing a postcard-size photographic paper... Thus did every amateur photographer have the potential of being a postcard maker.” —Charles Reynolds, “Wish You Were Here” (Popular Photography, June 1983)

3. “The postcards are a crowning achievement of [Franz] Marc’s work. They encapsulate all his experience of pictorial form... They also gave pictorial expression to a whole series of statements on life and the world.” —Franz Marc: Postcard to Prince Jussuf, Introduction by Peter-Klaus Schuster

4. “The postcard is a great neglected literary form about fifty words in length.” —Garrison Keillor, quoted in The Man from Lake Wobegon by Michael Fedo

5. “The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages. In all modesty, I confess that it may be the death of literature as we know it.” —Frank O’Hara, “Personism,” The Selected Poems of Frank O’Hara

6.     “It is not easy writing
         someone a postcard.
         The size and shape
         of the card cut you
         down to size...”

         —Ron Padgett, “Postcard,” Triangles in the Afternoon

7. “Picture postcards really excite me.” —Henry Miller, My Life and Times

8. “Everything in the world exists to end up as a postcard. (Mallarme adopted.)” —Tom Phillips, “The Postcard Vision,” from Works. Texts. To 1974

9.     “Blizzard in the suburbs
                  —the mailman
        And the poet walking.”

        —Jack Kerouac, Book of Haikus

10. “Every human being has a different way of achieving closeness and separation.” —Anais Nin

11.     “When I am alone
          How close my friends are;
          When I am with them
          How distant they are!”

          —Antonio Machado, Times Alone

12. “I had not realized how little alone one is in a postoffice. Before I had merely posted the letters and wondered.” —Jack Spicer, “Letters To James Alexander,” A Caterpillar Anthology

13. “I submit that the end-product of intuitive, personal photography is not a picture at all but the offspring of pictures as enriched language.” —Paul Vanderbilt, “A Few Alternatives” (The Massachusetts Review, Winter 1978)

14. “I often wish there was some way in which a photograph could go directly to its intended target. Like a welcome letter or a telephone call, directly to a specific person at the precise moment that the recipient is ready for it.” —Paul Vanderbilt, “Reflections,” Barbara Crane: Photographs 1948-1980

15. “Send me things in the mail. Wherever you go, I don’t care where you go, just send me something in the mail from where you are.” —Wallace Berman, as quoted in Wallace Berman: Support the Revolution by Tosh Berman et al

Copyright © 2004 by Roy Arenella