Her “Excerpt from Untitled poem about a red box” appears in the forty-seventh issue of Touch the Donkey.
Q: Tell me about “Excerpt from Untitled poem about a red box.”
A: Untitled poem about a red box is a book-length poem about a handcrafted red box the size of a jewelry or takeout box on view in a small, dark, gallery-like space. On the surface of the box are embroidered objects that resemble butterflies or flowers; a poem threads its way in between these decorations. The viewers (a “we” comprising the narrator and readers) are given to understand that the poem, mysteriously, both is on and is the box, and that the poem is about death. Hanging above the red box there appear to be a series of similar boxes in other colors.
After the opening pages, which map out those parameters, the manuscript consists of a series of poems that appear on the lid, in each case followed by an exploration of the poem’s manifestation and meaning. Each poem, we are given to understand, may be the poem––or not. The excerpt you printed in touch the donkey No.47 comprises one such poem and the musing that it generates.
Q: How does this work compare to some of the other writing you’ve been doing lately?
A: My most recent book, co-written with Valerie Witte (One Thing Follows Another: Experiments in Dance, Art, and Life through the Lens of Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer, punctum 2025) is a collection of essays blending scholarship on the work of these two remarkable choreographers with memoir and poetry. So form- and content-wise, Untitled poem is a distinct shift.
That said, Untitled poem shares some features with One Thing Follows Another. Both take unconventional approaches to ekphrasis. In Untitled poem, the artwork described is imaginary. In the essay book, we moved beyond mere description of the work we addressed, using various postmodern choreographic techniques, and even dancing, as part of the process of generating the topics and formal contours of the essays. Another connection between the two texts is the mix of genres: the essays in One Thing Follows Another are infused with poetic elements, and Untitled poem has an essayistic quality in that it employs an inquisitive, logical tone as it seeks to understand a single encounter with an artwork.
Both of these projects, in turn, inform the work I’ve begun since finishing Untitled poem. Provisionally titled Glitter Stick, my current manuscript explores our relationship to objects––both material “goods” and our objectification of others. It includes research and reflection on the lives and works of 20th- and 21st-century visual and performance artists, which I blend with personal reflections, so there’s that “ekphrasis plus” element again. It’s one long essay punctuated by poems, so durationally and formally it incorporates elements of both earlier works.
Q: You seem to be very much a writer of projects. How did this process come about, and how do projects begin? When you begin something new, are you always feeling your way into a book-length manuscript?
A: As a grad student, I was introduced to the book-length or beyond-book-length project, exemplified in work by poets such as H.D., Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, Kamau Brathwaite, Anne Waldman, Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha, Leslie Scalapino, Lyn Hejinian, Nathaniel Mackey, Alice Notley, and Myung Mi Kim. At some point, Sarah Mangold turned me on to Lynn Keller’s Forms of Expansion: Recent Long Poems by Women. I was both intimidated and excited by the prospect of sustaining a work over the course of an entire book. Over time, I found that the long form suited me.
To write a long poem I need to spend time building a vessel––subject matter and formal constraints––that I’ll be able to sail in for the length of a book. In the past, this has often taken considerable time and several discarded attempts. But I’m willing to enter the void, however uncomfortable, in order to arrive at the next project––it seems to mirror the process of big-C Creation. That said, there’s been a shift of late. Very soon after Val and I finished One Thing Follows Another, I knew the rough contours of the next two books.
But emphasis on “rough.” There’s still a lot I don’t know before I get going on a project. There’s an intuitive (impetuous?) quality to some of my choices. For example, I chose to engage the work of Yvonne Rainer without knowing much about her. I’m interested in this process of making a commitment to something that floats by. (I met my life partner on a street corner.)
As a project begins to take shape, a serendipity kicks into gear––the manuscript seems to magnetize just the right texts, art, conversations, and observations. And I adore the deep dive into research on the topic(s) I’m addressing.
So I’ve preferred writing book-length works to single poems, which feel more like speed-dating. That said, lately I’ve written single poems here and there, and have found that enjoyable. So I’m not saying no to any approach.
Q: With a handful of books and chapbooks over the past twenty years, as well as your current works-in-progress, how do you feel your work has progressed? Where do you see your work headed?
A: I’ve always leaned on processes and procedures that sidestep conscious choices in my writing, because I felt my unconscious had access to so much more depth and breadth than my conscious mind. Over time, the wall between my conscious and unconscious seems to be crumbling––or at least, I’m getting more help from the former without losing the latter. For example, I can juggle multiple themes and stylistic elements over the arc of a book while still allowing for lots of surprises along the way. (Without surprises, why write?)
I’ll likely continue moving back and forth on a continuum between prose and poetry––sometimes alternating between books, sometimes within a book. I’ll keep trying to figure out how to make use of whatever movements of mind, obsessions, and experiences are relevant for a given project. Alongside my solo practice, I look forward to more collaborative writing and filmmaking. My fondest ambition lately is to become what I’m calling an apprentice visionary. Given my long habit of borrowing from the dream world and my interest in subverting intentionality I guess I already am that, but I want to embrace it, amplify it. Weirdly, a number of the long-form poets I listed earlier are also on my list of visionary poets. And of course beyond the poets, divination is practiced in so many forms both “high” and “low”––I look forward to that exploration. This goal of being a visionary-in-training increases my willingness to keep dosing myself with heavy data regarding our current world, while also helping me commit to radical self-care––both are needed for an entry-level position as a seer.
Q: I’m curious about your phrases “borrowing from the dream world” and “subverting intentionality.” How do these ideas show themselves in your work? Are they a foundational approach? Are they imagistic? Do they manifest as a series of interruptions as you write, creating shifts in the direction of the work?
A: They are foundational; they can be imagistic; they can manifest as interruptions that shift direction.
I think artists in any medium have the opportunity and responsibility to help rouse us all from the trance of narrow self-interest cultivated by commercial and state interests, in order to save what’s best about being human––our capacity to connect with something larger, whether we call that creativity, the human community, earth, cosmos, spirit, or something else. This has been a challenge since long before the invention of the smart phone, the current environmental crisis, and the recent rise in fascism around the globe. But it does seem to me the stakes are growing, if only given the ever increasing role of tech with its poorly understood side effects and capacity to be manipulated for harmful ends.
In dreams and waking visions, and via other tools and techniques that shake up what we think we know (in poetry, think for example of collage, erasure, associational thinking, the music of language), we can gain greater access to a deep and untameable wisdom. That doesn’t mean I would just splat a dream (for example) down on the page and call that a poem. Why would I turn my back on culture, on craft––that glorious dimension of being human? Rather, I’m interested in the dance between conscious craft and the effort to go beyond what I know, in the service of Dickinson’s exhortation to “Tell all the truth but tell it slant —”. There are probably innumerable ways this can manifest in a piece of writing (or in a film––I’ve collaborated on two so far––or any work of art), including the ones you mention, imagery or a surprising shift in direction within a piece.
Q: Has your collaboration with film changed the way you think about the poem, or about writing more generally? What was the process like?
A: I like to think that collaboration, both with people across disciplines (as in the case of the films) and with other writers, has over time infused my solo writing practice with a more collaborative spirit––more of a sense of being in conversation with the empty page, with language, with my source material: “What’s your perspective?” “How do you want to contribute?” “Hey, let’s try this and see what happens.” Beyond that, I don’t see my film collaborations changing the way I think about the poem or about writing. To date, those projects have been initiated by texts I had already written and we went from there.
The first film, We Agree on the Sun, has its origins in an essay I wrote for Val’s and my collection One Thing Follows Another called “How Will You Move: Including All of Us in the Dance.” The essay takes the form of an abecedarian––it includes a section for every letter of the alphabet. One of the constraints I used to generate the text was that every letter-section includes instructions (some obvious, some not) for how to enact that letter in dance. Including these instructions was a way for me to inhabit the world of Yvonne Rainer and Simone Forti––both by inventing a generative constraint similar to ones they used, and by taking on the role of choreographer. As soon as I came up with this idea, I started dreaming of going full circle and creating a dance piece based on the text. Eventually I decided on a film, which over time can reach more people than a live performance.
The process of making We Agree on the Sun was relatively straightforward. I selected and strung together bits of language from throughout the essay that all connect to one of the essay’s themes, homelessness. I met Jonah Belsky and Ames Tierney (the filming and editing team), and Ayana Yonesaka (the dancer-choreographer), through mutual acquaintances. We had to work fast because Jonah and Ames were about to leave for points east. The four of us started by teasing out layers of meaning in the text. It was important to me that we enact the nonlinear, multivalent nature of the text to the extent possible, and that we balance agreement on certain aspects of meaning with our own responses. The conversation continued through all phases––the choreography, filming, and editing. We shot the whole thing in four hours, and I premiered the film at the &Now literary festival in Bothell, Washington a couple months later.
Lizard Song was initiated when my brother Dave started sending me songs featuring vocals and multiple instruments, which he’d recorded on music creation software, based on the initial poems in my collection Lizard. We decided to make a dance-poetry-music film using the songs. It was a much larger and more complex production than for We Agree on the Sun. Dave flew out from Boston and recorded the five songs at Tiny Telephone, an Oakland recording studio, with Bay Area-based musicians and vocalists I’d found. Choreography director ArVejon Jones created pieces for themself and three other dancers. We shot in multiple locations over a few days with a larger crew. Fairly late in the game, we concluded that using all five songs strung together would result in an overly long piece, and that the film’s tonality was diverging from that of the songs––it was becoming more indeterminate, less contained. Fortunately, composer Penina Biddle-Gottesman stepped in and worked closely with Jonah to create a soundtrack. Because of this late pivot, it took several months to shape the raw footage into a film that cohered while leaving room for viewers to find their own meanings in it. Despite the complexities of the project, I’m very happy that the final piece still reflects the creative input of all who worked on it. Everyone involved located and channeled their inner Lizard!
Once the film was done, Dave and I produced a CD of his music, Lizard Song Cycle, which is also up at soundcloud.com/david-rosenthal-2/sets/lizard-music.
Q: Finally, who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?
A: Since the early aughts, I’ve started more writing sessions than not by responding creatively and critically in my journal to a poem by Celan. When I’ve gone through all the work of his that I have, I dig around at the library for volumes I haven’t read, or start cycling through it all again. Other than Celan, often the closest I come to revisiting the work of poets and writers I treasure is to read new, or new-to-me, books by them. Recently, that’s included volumes by Nathaniel Mackey, Michael Palmer, Renee Gladman, Evelyn Reilly, and Robert Glück––at the moment, I’m stoned on the goodness of About Ed.
I’d need another me to spend much time going back and hanging out with much of the work that has been crucial for me––there’s always so much more to read!
