The postcard itself is an emblem of bygone eras. In today's webbed-wide world, postal service seems old-fashioned: why lick a stamp when you can e-mail someone an animated on-line postcard that will play any country’s national anthem with a mouse click? The whole idea of a vacation—a real vacation, where you're really away from it all—becomes more remote, as cell phones and laptops become more commonplace, and, seemingly, essential.

All the more reason for poetry—of the "postcard" or any other variety. Poems still travel well in a composition notebook, but they’re also highly adaptable to new technology. The poem is portable and agile—we can slip it into an e-mail or inside a greeting card. Typing and sending Auden's "September 1, 1939" is a relatively simple proposition; not so for War and Peace.

This fall we here in the U.S. have had our fair share of sound bites, slogans, and rhetoric. Let us find some respite in the music of poems and the places they take us.

BEGIN YOUR JOURNEY HERE