Sarah Rosenthal responds to Dana Teen Lomax's Disclosure

Disclosure taught me how to read all over again. It ups the ante on the experimental, forcing me to reconsider: What is the story? Who wrote it? (Dana Teen Lomax--or is it Momax? Or is it the host of institutions that reward her, punish her, and monitor her every move? Or is it the culture that spawns these institutions?  Or is it the work of our own projections?) Can a W-2 form be called a poem? What leads me to classify a text as "easy" or "difficult"? Disclosure reconfigures every aspect of "the book," from front cover to "About the Author."  Someone once told me that excitement is one step away from fear.Disclosure makes me nervous--it thrills me.     

Sarah Rosenthal's interviews with Bay Area writers, A Community Writing Itself: Conversations with Vanguard Bay Area Writers, is published by Dalkey Archive (2010) and her collection of poems, Manhatten, by Spuyten Duyvil (2009).  Rosenthal has published three chapbooks: How I Wrote This Story (Margin to Margin, 2001), SITINGS (a + bend, 2000) and not Chicago (Melodeon Poetry Systems, 1998).  Her poetry and fiction have been anthologized in BAY POETICS (Faux Press 2006) and hinge (Crack Press, 2002).

Dana Teen Lomax's Disclosure is available from SPD.