Poetry in the Mail

 

A couple years ago I posted on Mail Art (link).  Here's another kind of mail art...

Browsing at the Thomas Ford Library I came upon this Ted Kooser book called Valentines.  This from the LOC site, where Kooser was named the 13th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress:

I’ve always thought of Valentine’s Day as the Poets’ Holiday, because it’s our one special day celebrating the unembarrassed communication of feelings, which of course is what poetry is all about. And of course verses and Valentine’s Day have been joined in greeting cards for as long as most of us can remember.

I began writing Valentine’s Day poems in 1986. I’d have them printed on postcard-sized stock, put a small heart sticker in a corner, and mail them to friends. Several times I had them mailed from Valentine, NE, so they’d have a Valentine postmark. Over the course of the next twenty-one years—as my list of recipients ballooned from 50 to 2,500—the costs of my quirky hobby got out of hand and I had to stop. Thank goodness the University of Nebraska Press collected all the valentines, commissioned my friend Bob Hanna to do pen and ink illustrations, and created a book, Valentines.