THE POETRY OF STRANGERS :: Brian Sonia-Wallace

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

"Do you need a poem?" With this question, Brian Sonia-Wallace began his journey as the RENT Poet. Just "another unemployed millennial at the tail end of the financial crisis, looking for a purpose," he took a typewriter to a downtown Los Angeles street party and set up a folding chair and tray table with a sign: "POETRY STORE/ give me a topic/ I'll write you a poem/ pay me what you think it's worth."

When his first customer, a tough, tattooed, buzz-cut Chicana, softened before his eyes after reading his poem about her father, Sonia-Wallace was hooked. He "accidentally started a poetry business with a $20 garage sale typewriter and an impending sense of doom." Intending it as a performance art experiment slash practical joke, Sonia-Wallace proclaimed, "I'm going to pay my rent with poetry!" Since he was in despair and felt his life was over, why not do something stupid?

In The Poetry of Strangers, Sonia-Wallace shares how he not only paid his rent, but ended up with corporate jobs, Amtrak and Mall of America writer residencies, fundraisers, weddings and numerous other gigs. More interesting is that he'd never loved and doesn't consider his work poetry. It's about relationships, the "shrapnel interactions left behind, bits of other people" that left him less alone. While social connections were fraying, Sonia-Wallace traveled the country connecting with poetic empathy. "It was poetry that led [him] to discover a private America, an America where intimacy was possible, one person at a time."

STREET SENSE: This is an interesting one and I'm not entirely sure who to recommend it to. Not that anyone couldn't or wouldn't enjoy it, but it's an amorphous story. It's a memoir, but it's also about community, the state our country is in, our lack of expression, so many things. That is a positive and a negative, as it felt a little messy at times. Yet it's something of a messy story about messy life, and much of it was truly fascinating.

COVER NERD SAYS: I'm not sure what it is about this image that was unclear to me, but it feels off somehow. It's obvious the author is holding a typewriter, yet every time I look at it I think "Oh! That's a typewriter." Maybe because it's odd to see a typewriter in a scene such as that? Which is kind of the point. In any event, this completely fine cover didn't sit right with me. Maybe with the fonts it looks a bit...homemade? Maybe if it kept a faint blue sky instead of falling off into stark white? Maybe I'm just missing the message?