A SUBSCRIPTION-ONLY POEM BY POSTCARD, MAILED WORD BY WORD, FROM SUMMER SOLSTICE TO EQUINOX
A poem is an experience across time and space, from poet to reader.
The Summer Slow Poem travels leisurely to reach its reader— instead of a reading experience that lasts seconds or minutes, this one fills a full season. The feeling of the air changes in the time it takes you to read this poem.
Readers will receive the poem word by word, day by day, during the 94 days that span June 20, 2025 (the summer solstice) and September 22, 2025 (the fall equinox). I send this poem from my home to your home. It arrives word by word, a slow motion version of the way we normally write and read. Through the postal service, the poem travels by people and machines—by air, road, and foot—by bureaucracy and by chance. At the conclusion of your subscription, you will receive a simple binding and front/back covers, should you choose to collect and bind the thick stack of postcards into a book.
Join me in a shared routine of dailiness and mutual inconvenience, together sharing the small, gradual novelty of a season passing.
WHY SUMMER
I am writing and sending this poem, largely, from Brooklyn. A New York summer has its own distinctive character (and character arc) in the cultural imagination — this is a span of time that has built-in anxieties, pleasures, hyperboles, icons, and expectations. Summer is famous for leisure. There’s a bloom of social activity but not without solitudes—the longest days and most atmospheric, romantic nights. Gatherings and festivals and sprawling, empty days soundtracked by mosquitoes and backyard parties and box fans, perfumed by stone fruit and sunscreen. Always and obviously, nature moves and changes alongside us.
THE POEM
A reading experience characterized by continuity and accumulation, the sweetness of slowness, chance, and a release of control— metaphorically, let’s say the words of the poem will travel like guests arriving to a house party, wearing the journey on one’s sleeve, punctual or late, frazzled by the trip, or in surprise couplings and trios or mysteriously, sometimes, never at all.
A SUMMER SLOW POEM subscription…
- 94 hand-stamped postcards, mailed daily, from the first to last day of summer. Each postcard, in sequence, contains one sprawling word of the poem. When gathered collectively, the postcards create an incremental design, a visual shift from the end of spring to start of fall.
- On the final day of summer, receive covers and a simple screw post binding to compile your postcard poem into a thick one-of-a-kind book. When the postcards of the poem are bound into a book, the visual arc from start to finish complements the page-turning.
There’s a SLIDING SCALE, from $15 to $82…
“PONY EXPRESS” — $82 suggested
At this highest rate, a PONY EXPRESS subscription lets me increase the number of discounted SNAIL MAIL subscriptions offered. This is a full summer subscription to Summer Slow Poem and includes a unique front/back cover.
“PIGEON POST” — $52 suggested
At the cost of postage, or $0.56/card, a PIGEON POST subscription includes a full summer subscription to Summer Slow Poem.
“SNAIL MAIL” — $27 suggested
At a discounted rate below the cost of postage, a SNAIL MAIL subscription includes a full summer subscription to Summer Slow Poem (limit 11 subscriptions at this rate).
Digital zine copy of poem — $15
A single compiled PDF copy of the 94 postcards delivered on the first day of fall, sent via email.
Subscriptions are currently closed
*If any of your postcards have been completely lost in the mail, a limited number of replacements will be available by request, and will be mailed at the end of the summer along with the covers/binding.
