Postcards from the Interior is a collection of postcard poems written from different geographical locations and varied states of heart and mind. The first section, “Postcards from Vermont,” is composed of poems about Vermont towns and historical landmarks. The second section, “Postcards from the Interior,” stretches to include poems from far-flung places, real and imagined. Adroit at juxtaposing the exterior weather of landscapes and the interior weather of the human condition, Cooper writes poetry with the heft of a Romantic meditation and the breezy ease of contemporary song lyrics.
Wyn Cooper has published three previous poetry collections. A poem from his first book was turned into lyrics for Sheryl Crow’s Grammy-winning song “All I Wanna Do.” He lives in Battleboro, Vermont.
"In the intimate, coded, and revealing form of the postcard Wyn Cooper charts new realms of aesthetic, spiritual, and geographic space. He blurs the distinction between the public and private, discovering in history, the weather, favored places, and states of consciousness a wealth of imaginative possibilities. Wish you were here, these poems say in a variety of enduring ways. And you are."
—Christopher Merrill
"You must read Postcards from the Interior. With deceptively simple language, Wyn Cooper has given us new poems that are like urgent postcards from an old friend insure if he'll ever see us again, and there's so little time and so much to capture, not only for the capturing itself but for that elusive and essential bridge these poems build between us, a bridge we truly cannot live without. This is a triumphant book!"
—Andre Dubus III
"Postcards from the Interior, as the title implies, is a collection of postcard poems 'sent' from varied places, and states of heart and mind. This collection, Cooper's third, balances prose poems, free verse, and formal verse. The first section, "Postcards from Vermont," is composed of poems from Vermont towns and historical landmarks. The second section includes postcard poems from other settings, real and imagined. "Wyn Cooper's superb postcard poems, deft and exemplary, say just enough, and never too much. Their clarities and their mysteries travel hand in hand, their feet raise the clean sound of gravel from the world's outer and inner roads."
—Jane Hirshfield
© BOA Editions, Ltd. 2005