Rant: That old librarian who handed me a worn-out poetry book and said 'read this'

I was 16, bored out of my mind at the Philly public library, and she just slid this beat-up copy of "Leaves of Grass" across the counter without a word. Read half of it that night and it changed how I thought about writing prompts ever since - has anyone else had a stranger just hand them something that clicked?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_kelly8d ago

Oh yeah, a random diner waitress handed me a tattered Bukowski once and it completely messed with my head in the best way.

black.margaret6d ago

That waitress probably knew exactly what she was doing. Bukowski has a way of hitting you right where you live, no filter, no apologies. Once you read something like "Post Office" or "Factotum", it changes how you see the whole blue collar grind and the people stuck in it. The guy wrote about the ugliest parts of life and somehow made it feel like the most honest thing you'd ever read. It's like he gave a voice to everyone who ever felt like a loser or a nobody and said, "Yeah, this is how it is, and that's okay." That tattered copy probably smelled like coffee and cigarettes and had all the right stains on the right pages. You can't un-read that stuff.