USPS 20th Century Poets Stamps

On April 21, 2012, the U.S. Postal Service issued commemorative “forever” stamps honoring ten 20th Century poets. Here’s the official description of the stamps from usps.com: Ten great poets are honored on this Twentieth-Century Poets (Forever®) stamp sheet, including several who served as United States Poet Laureate. The many awards won by this illustrious group — Elizabeth Bishop, Joseph Brodsky, Gwendolyn Brooks, E. E. Cummings, Robert Hayden, Denise Levertov, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams — include numerous Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and honorary degrees.

We have featured six of these poets on the Silver Birch Press blog (Cummings, Roethke, Levertov, Plath, Williams, and Stevens), and will feature the remaining four (Bishop, Brodsky, Brooks, and Hayden) in future posts.

The Night Mail, poem by W.H. Auden

THE NIGHT MAIL (Excerpts)
By W.H. Auden

This is the night mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
 
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door…
 
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
And applications for situations,
And timid lovers’ declarations,
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled on the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,
The cold and official and the heart’s outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Wystan Hugh Auden (1907 – 1973), who published as was an Anglo-American poet, born in England, later an American citizen, regarded by many critics as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety of tone, form and content. The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature. (Read more at Wikipedia.org)

The Night Mail, poem by W.H. Auden

THE NIGHT MAIL (Excerpts)
By W.H. Auden

This is the night mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
 
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door…
 
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
And applications for situations,
And timid lovers’ declarations,
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled on the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,
The cold and official and the heart’s outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Wystan Hugh Auden (1907 – 1973), who published as was an Anglo-American poet, born in England, later an American citizen, regarded by many critics as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety of tone, form and content. The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature. (Read more at Wikipedia.org)

USPS 20th Century Poets Stamps

On April 21, 2012, the U.S. Postal Service issued commemorative “forever” stamps honoring ten 20th Century poets, and while I admire those selected, I think the USPS missed an opportunity to honor one of the world’s most beloved poets — namely Charles Bukowski, who worked for the USPS for 14 years.

Here’s the official description of the stamps from usps.com: Ten great poets are honored on this Twentieth-Century Poets (Forever®) stamp sheet, including several who served as United States Poet Laureate. The many awards won by this illustrious group — Elizabeth Bishop, Joseph Brodsky, Gwendolyn Brooks, E. E. Cummings, Robert Hayden, Denise Levertov, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams — include numerous Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and honorary degrees.

And now to right this oversight, we have created our own Bukowski stamp — Bukowski Forever, worth much more than 46 cents. 

Charles Bukowski (1920 – 1994) worked for the U.S. Postal Service in Los Angeles during the 1950s and 1960s, leaving in 1969 when publisher John Martin offered him a one-hundred-dollar-a-month stipend for life. A few weeks after he accepted Martin’s offer, Bukowski produced his first novel — Post Office, published by Black Sparrow Press in 1971. A prolific author or poetry and prose, Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories, and six novels — publishing over sixty books.

Stamps & Sympathy

At the post office a few days ago, I asked the clerk for a stamp appropriate for a sympathy card. She offered me this:

While I’m a fan of both Joe DiMaggio and baseball, I had to refuse this choice.

Again, I asked the clerk for an appropriate stamp for a sympathy card. Here was her next choice:

Did this woman not understand the meaning of “sympathy”?

Despite the long line of hot, disgruntled people behind me, I asked to look through her battered notebook of stamps. She said she had to show me the stamps. Again, I asked for a stamp for a sympathy card — this time amending the statement to include, “You know, for someone who has died.” I think this was a poor choice of words. Did the woman think I intended to send the card to the deceased? That was a long, long way for the card to travel, with postage much higher than an insured box of Christmas gifts sent to Japan.

Feeling the impatience of the people waiting behind me, I said, “Just give me a flag stamp.” The woman shook her head, telling me I’d have to buy a minimum of 20, which I didn’t have enough money to purchase. Finally, in exasperation, she said: “Just let me meter it.”

I couldn’t believe the coldness of this woman — a sympathy card with a metered strip for postage? Talk about bad taste. When I told her no, I had to have a “real” stamp, she turned to a page with this stamp:

The butterfly stamp was, of course, the perfect choice for a sympathy card. Out of curiosity (not cheapness), I asked why the stamp cost 65 cents (did some of the proceeds go to butterfly conservation?), and the woman told me she didn’t know. Anyway, I bought the stamp, put it on the sympathy card, and mailed it. The butterfly is a symbol of the psyche, of metamorphosis, of reincarnation. I send my good thoughts and good wishes to you, Judy, across the universe.