Witness

by Shawn Pittard

Grounded in a landscape of rivers, oceans, forests and dreams, Witness is an intimate and unflinching exploration of family, love, aging, dementia, caregiving and death. These poems are meditations on the changing sense of identity we experience in older age which, ultimately, reveals one’s unique, intrinsic character. By caring for his declining mother, the poet is guided into his own older age and towards a better understanding of his own essential self.

Enjoy a video of Shawn reading from Witness:

Early Praise for Witness:

The poems in Shawn Pittard’s Witness offer us a world where every breath, every step could be the last, yet each also serves as revelation, a panorama, a shimmering strand in the web of connection and existence. With his broad cosmological perspective, he zeroes in with his poetic zoom lens to capture the challenges of aging, mortality, and loss—all the fragilities he encountered during years of daily caretaking for a beloved parent. These poems remind us how We love and dream on the backs/ of vast tectonic plates.// Standing on what feels like solid ground. (from “Requiescat”)

—Susan Kelly-DeWitt, author of Frangible Operas

With these reflections Pittard invites us to appreciate the paradoxes raised by death—the mundane becoming the sacred; the losses, a gift; mortality AND joy. He shows a way to be open to the necessary contemplations at end-of-life—what does it mean to be on this life’s ride and what is our place in the tapestry. A throughline of this collection emphasizes the mystery of connection—the ways we are and remain connected through intuition, touch, time, memory, dream, and inspirited energy—through this life and beyond death.

—Molly DenBoer Stuart, facilitator, Conversations about Death Programs

Shawn Pittard’s book of poems, Witness, pays homage to his father and mother. It is a work of beautifully assembled words shaped around gratitude and respect. It is a book of sharing. Hard times/good times. It is a continuum. A collage of family moments hung on a wall at home. Deeply personal. A reflection. A celebration—

Shawn opens the door and welcomes you to come inside.

—Danyen Powell, facilitator, The Sacramento Poetry Center’s Tuesday Night Poetry Workshop

About the Author

Shawn Pittard is the author of two slender volumes of poetry: Standing in the River, which was the winner of Tebot Bach’s 2010 Clockwise Chapbook Competition, and These Rivers from Rattlesnake Press. He’s been a coach for Poetry Out Loud and a California Poet in the Schools. Shawn taught recitation and writing in middle schools and high schools, including juvenile hall (yep, they’re good kids), as well as with veterans and the men in Folsom Prison. By day, he labored in the field of environmental protection, planning, and public policy, focusing on energy.

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