Where MLK was assassinated
Lorraine Motel

Memphis

“What are the words I do not yet have – verbs that will story our bodies into something more than missing . . . let us poem a place where you cannot erase us into white space.”

            -Tanaya Winder, “Missing More Than a Word”

Sun Records

Memphis

“One doesn’t sing because he hopes one day to appear in an opera; one sings because one’s lungs are full of joy.  It’s wonderful to listen to a great performance, but it’s even more wonderful to encounter in the street a happy vagabond who can’t stop singing because his heart is full of joy.”

            -Henry Miller, “The Angel Is My Watermark”

Husk Restaurant

Nashville

“It might be a hymn, a shard of rebellion, or a teenage prayer.  We discover inspiration where we may, in an old guitar in the corner of a garage, under a bed, or hanging in a pawnshop window.  In a phrase carried to us by the wind, walking along.”

            -Patti Smith, Collected Lyrics

“I tell them I found myself in words.  I tell them now I don’t have to choose one thing to be.  I get to be everything I wanted.”

            -Tanaya Winder from “Words as Seeds”

Memphis, Tennessee