rentpoet I think this might be the best thing I wrote this weekend. A woman approached near the end of my writing time with the PEN Center, and I told her I was wrapping up. She said, “It’s okay, I was going to give you a sad [topic] anyway.” Of course, I couldn’t let her walk away after that. She shared with me that her husband, a sculptor, had recently passed. When I asked what he sculpted, she said “Always different things! So of course he wasn’t commercially successful.” It’s moments like these that keep me in wonder at what I get to do, moment to moment. I wasn’t planning to share this piece, but she shared it on her socials so I feel permission to share it publicly.
#poem #poetry #art #artist #love #loss #sculpture #mourning #typewriterpoet #typewriter #typewriterpoetry #storyteller #storytelling #witness
—from Rattle #64, Summer 2019
Tribute to Instagram Poets
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Brian Sonia-Wallace: “Instagram gives me a place to share the poems I write for strangers on my typewriter as RENT Poet. The poems get another audience, and sometimes it helps me to unburden myself of the stories people trust me with by sharing them in this form with others. Many of my posts are re-posts from the people I’ve written these poems for—my favorite thing is to see where the poems wind up, whether on a bedside table or a door, the way they continue to live in people’s lives. Online, the relationships that started when I wrote the poem continue.” (web)
Tonight’s guest on the Rattlecast is Brian Sonia-Wallace. Click here to watch live …
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