additional things
I sent out 155 poems over the course of the year.
Of these, 27 were for people I would consider “friends” or “family,” i.e. people that I know, and the remaining 128 were sent to strangers.
10 of the poems to strangers were returned to sender.
I received 10 individual responses from strangers regarding poems on the website, 1 via snail mail, and 1 via email.
Of these 12 responses, 2 were negative.
One of the negative comments came (indirectly) from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
(It was slightly discouraging.)
The entire project cost me $80.08 in the cost of stamps (a nice palindrome), ~$2.50 to send one poem to Korea, and ~$10.00 in the cost of envelopes, which varied in size. I stole most of the paper the poems were written on from my place of employment at the time, or from my parents. The total cost was ~$92.50.
The project began as a reason for me to force myself to write on a regular basis, and to put ideas (however unpolished) “out”; in other words, to make them finished by publishing them (and, in a way, by forcing an audience on my work; or, alternatively, by forcing my work onto an audience). Though, I suppose the overarching idea was an attempt to make a connection with that audience — to give them an unexpected gift from an unknown place. Yet, judging by the responses (from strangers at least) I’d wager that the attempted “connection” translated more into curiosity. Above all, people wanted the mystery of their poem solved. They wanted answers to the anomaly in their mailbox. And maybe that’s because poems and letters and secret admirers have been romanticized in society, or maybe its symptomatic of current social fears. Maybe it’s much simpler than that.
In any case, I guess the joke’s on me in the end — I’m now left with the mystery of what became of all the poems without a response attached to them. Did the arrive at a house occupied by new residents, and thrown away? Were they read and discarded? Or were they kept and loved without any response given?