I never knew what Pantone was until I started working in the letterpress studio of my university. Pantone guides were scattered around the room, and I loved looking at the super rich rainbow of colors. It’s the same feeling as when I got my first box of 120 Crayola crayons — So many colors, so many possibilities!
When I first laid eyes on the Pantone Postcards by Chronicle Books, the first thought in my head was “It’s like a canvas! That square of color is just waiting to be transformed!” And thus the idea for the Pantone Poetry Postcard Project was born.
There are 100 postcards in the box, and I figured that if I work on 2 postcards a week, all 100 postcards will be sent to new homes by the end of 2012. I love sending mail (and of course receiving mail), and I love the idea of adding my own touch to these beautiful hues. At first the project only had 3 P’s. It wasn’t until later that I decided to add a poem on the back side instead of a message. This way I get to indulge in another love — poetry!
I’ve always enjoyed reading poetry, and unfortunately I don’t read as much of it as I used to. However, after meeting Stuart Kestenbaum and Naomi Shihab Nye at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in the summer of 2010 and being introduced to their poems, I am once again inspired to delve into this world where magic lies in words.
A glimpse into the process:
First, I choose a recipient. Then I choose a poem that I think that person may enjoy. I let the words inspire my choice of color and the image I create. The poem and address are penned by hand and a stamp attached. Voila! The postcard is ready to go.
Here are the first two postcards.
#1 For B.K. in Chicago, IL
Laughter
STUART KESTENBAUM
You know the kind of laughter
when you laugh so hard and unexpectedly
you can snort liquid right through
your nose, like the soda you were drinking.
That’s what happened to me with a milkshake
when I was 11 years old and too worried
for my own good. My uncle and I were swapping
book jokes. “Have you read Tiger’s Revenge
by Claude Balls?” he asks, which strikes me
as so funny that I begin to laugh
uncontrollably and milk is dripping from my nose
almost like I’ve thrown up, but instead
I feel incredibly light and happy.
That’s the kind of laughter that even
if you have been crying and heard someone
else laughing, you would start to laugh.
It spreads like a wind passing
through leaves, it makes the bitter muscle
of the heart unclench itself. Imagine,
all this from only eight words from my uncle,
and one of those a preposition
with only two letters.
#2 For J.L. in Brooklyn, NY
Making a Fist
NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
‘How do you know if you are going to die?’
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
‘When you can no longer make a fist.’
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.
