The 'process notes' pieces were originally solicited by Maw Shein Win as addendum to her teaching particular poems and poetry collections for various workshops and classes. This process note and poems by Sarah Rosenthal are part of her curriculum for Maker, Mentor, Muse and her poetry classes at the University of San Francisco. Thanks for reading.
I started my book Estelle Meaning Star during a period of illness, an experience of extremity, both in terms of physical pain and discomfort and in terms of an acute awareness of the tenuousness of form. One realizes how easy it is to become not-here, not-me. And yet, miraculously, one is still here, feeling hopeful or sorry for oneself or grimly determined. And then, recovery, the shufflingly slow yet undeniable return of energy, strength. Still and forever marked by treatment side effects, still and forever marked by the knowledge of precarity.
* * *
I wrote forever but should have written “forever.”
* * *
I set up writing parameters that circumvent intentionality because I’ve long known how limited my conscious thinking can be, circling the same tired tropes. In the case of this book, I recorded my dreams during treatment, then later on entertained various ways of using them as the basis of a book, eventually landing on cut-ups. I stripped and shuffled the language to create a pool of estranged yet charged language. Then I focused on applying what I know of craft. I thought as little as possible about my personal narrative.
* * *
Looking back, I can read the book, on one level, as addressing the making and unmaking of self. These themes are there in the form—the language is physically being de- and reconstructed on the page, the cuts still showing, the lines wobbly, uneven. Are these poems trying mightily to present themselves as polished, published work? Look, I’m almost like a typeset poem. Are they showing their seams because they want to say imperfection is actually where the action is, because we can never get it right, never be in control, even as we notice that most of the time that’s precisely what we strive for?
* * *
These themes are there in the content too. As the persona falls apart, there may be tentativeness and curiosity, fear and joy and yearning––I see these in the recurring figure of Estelle. As the persona falls apart, what is left? Schoolchildren, bus rides, bar stools, architecture, dancers, dogs, grief workers, revolutionaries … in a word, world. Or shall we say reality. Which includes the imaginary. Or is it vice versa.
Sarah Rosenthal’s [photo credit: Denise
Newman] books include Estelle Meaning Star, Lizard, A
Community Writing Itself: Conversations with Vanguard Writers of the Bay Area,
Manhatten, and two collaborations with Valerie Witte: The Grass Is Greener When the Sun
Is Yellow, and the forthcoming One Thing
Follows Another: Experiments in Dance, Art, and Life Through the Lens of Simone
Forti and Yvonne Rainer. Her collaborative film We Agree on the Sun
won Best Experimental Short at the 2021 Berlin Independent Film Festival. She
and her collaborators recently completed a second film, Lizard Song.
More at sarahrosenthal.net.
Maw Shein Win's most recent poetry collection is Storage Unit for the
Spirit House (Omnidawn) which was nominated for the Northern California
Book Award in Poetry, longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Award, and
shortlisted for CALIBA's Golden Poppy Award for Poetry. She is the inaugural
poet laureate of El Cerrito, CA. Win's previous books include full-length
poetry collection Invisible Gifts and two chapbooks, Ruins of a
glittering palace and Score and Bone. Win often collaborates with
visual artists, musicians, and other writers and her Process Note Series
features poets on their process. She teaches in the MFA Program at the
University of San Francisco. Along with Dawn Angelicca Barcelona and Mary
Volmer, she is a co-founder of Maker, Mentor, Muse, a new literary community.
Win’s full-length collection Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn) is
forthcoming in Fall 2024. mawsheinwin.com
