Postcards

As always, your work impresses me. Allow me to begin as you did, with the title.

Right from the beginning, we can see exactly where you're going with this. Postcards; travel. A journey.

Without many words it is clear what kind of people we are dealing with. A family always on the move, making the best of a life that isn't the best. So many small details have been hidden within a narrative that flows like a river, around bends and snaking back to the same place we began.

Not only is the narrative clear and complex all at once, the vision is superb. The imagery used paints a picture that I can see in my minds eye as clearly as day. It manages to touch me with simple words; day old cherry pie, a mother with a bitten nail. These are things that stick with us after we finish reading. Such clever murmurs of detail.

In terms of the technical, it's clear you know what you're doing. You know how to weave so much into a few lines and leave us with the amount of impact one might get from an entire short story. I gave four point five because there is one error, but a reader would not notice. I didn't, until I started reviewing.

This is a very original poem; these are things you can relate to, things from real life, and what could be more original, more real? I think that is why it has so much impact. That, and the facts beneath the words.

They live on maybe, on someday, on hopes and promises. They travel endlessly hoping for that sweet someday. Mom teaches small things with cacti, and bites her nails, and cares about her children. We don't know everything about her, but we know enough to form opinions. Dad isn't there, but he was once; he tries to find work constantly.

The premise is sound, the characters convincing. The slice-of-life woven into pretty words and clear images take me into her life and convince me that this is how she grew up, that this was a real event in a real person's life and that she grew up missing day-old cherry pies and 80's jukebox songs because they were all she had of her dad.

Postcards may not be as visceral or immediately engaging as some of your other works; in fact, it seems very gentle in its urgency to be heard. Still, it, too, has a story to tell, and one that will continue to be told. Your work reminds me of the classics, for those novels, poems, films, they are classic because they do not stop telling their stories.

No matter how old you are, no matter how you grew up, Postcards is something that everyone can relate to. That, if nothing else, is something to be praised.

I would encourage and recommend that my friends, my watchers, anyone and everyone that sees this, read your poems. They have meaning, and it has been too long since literature with meaning has been cherished and the authors given room and reassurance enough to grow.

Write on, Swansisters. May your pen never run out of ink, and your battery never run dry.