It started with a costume. Cindy Rinne had made a piece of fiber art and asked poet Bory Thach to write a poem in response. When he sent it to her, she wrote back. Neither knew where the exchange would lead, but they kept writing. The result was Letters Under Rock, a story in verse about two lovers, the Wanderer and the Nomad, who long to meet and leave letters for each other beneath a rock.

The collaboration eventually moved from the page to the stage. Rinne made the costumes, and the book includes photographs of the performance alongside her fiber art. In one of her favorite exchanges, the Wanderer drinks from a well and swallows “ancient / language, earth fire.” The Nomad writes a love letter by moonlight and watches meteors fall. The two are apart, yet each writes as though the other might be reached across the distance. For Rinne, these pages capture the longing and magic that drew her into the story. She also points readers to Chapter Four, “Karmic Roots,” which begins on page 56.

Rinne began combining art and poetry in high school. Today, she makes poems, zines, and fiber art in San Bernardino, California, and her poetry has found its way into exhibitions, dance performances, and collaborations with musicians. Her influences range from Anne Carson and Mary Oliver to Gabriel García Márquez, Laura Esquivel, and Aimee Bender. Nature and myth keep drawing her back to a question she likes to pose about her own work: “Which is the magic and which is the real?”

After an art and writing residency on Vancouver Island, Rinne returned with ideas scattered across several notebooks. Her approach was simple: “Just get it down.” She brings the same spirit to her advice for aspiring writers. Go to an open mic and read what you have that day. At her own first public reading, she remembers realizing that she was an author. Publishing books later in life brought her a new community, and her recent work includes the collection Today in Three Caves.

For Rinne, Letters Under Rock is also a reminder of what can happen when two people from different generations and cultures pay close attention to each other’s stories. It began with one artist offering something she’d made and another answering in his own words. The surprise was what they made together.

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