Michael talks with Danielle Rose about her family of readers, coming to poetry from punk rock, competitive virtual racing, writing personal work at a distance, recent chapbooks, coming back to writing after a break, writing that's aware of itself, working with Greek myth, George Mallory, and much more.
Michael talks with Danielle Rose about her family of readers, coming to poetry from punk rock, competitive virtual racing, writing personal work at a distance, recent chapbooks, coming back to writing after a break, writing that's aware of itself, working with Greek myth, George Mallory, and much more.
Danielle Rose lives in Massachusetts. She is the author of at first & then from Black Lawrence Press & The History of Mountains from Variant Lit. Her work can be found in publications such as Hobart, HAD, Palette, Sundog Lit, Autofocus, and more.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael Wheaton 00:06
Welcome back to The Lives of Writers, a podcast presented by Autofocus, an online lit mag dedicated to artful autobiographical writing, which you can read today at autofocuslit.com and follow on Twitter and Instagram: @autofocuslit. I'm the publisher and editor of Autofocus, Michael Wheaton. Today on the show, I talk with Danielle Rose. Danielle Rose is the author of the chapbooks At First & Then from Black Lawrence Press and The History of Mountains from Variant Lit, which comes out very soon (this weekend). Her work can be found in publications such as Hobart, HAD, Palette, Sundog Lit, and Autofocus. Alright, let's get to it. This is my conversation with Danielle Rose.
Danielle Rose 00:56
We live in a house that is less than a mile away from the house that I grew up in. It sort of happened by accident, but also not, because we were looking in the in the same kind of area. It's in a different town. It's actually a different city right over the border, but less than a mile. It's been nice over this last year to be able to at least easily see my parents even if it's at a distance and outside and everything like that. It's been good to have them around. They still live there.
Michael Wheaton 01:28
Is it nostalgic when you go over there, or is it just sort of normal?
Danielle Rose 01:32
Oh, it's really weird at this point. I actually don't go there that much. You know, especially over the last year, I just haven't at all really. But it's definitely really weird. I mean, walking into that house now. When so much in my life has changed. And it's just very, very different. Yeah, it's weird. It's spooky. It's like sort of stepping into a ghost story, stepping into an alternate history. Except that, I don't know, the alternate history is the one that's in my head.
Michael Wheaton 02:06
There's no anxiety, like, when you visit your parents?
Danielle Rose 02:11
You know, just the usual family stuff.
Michael Wheaton 02:13
Just the usual anxiety. Yeah. Do you have a good relationship with your parents?
Danielle Rose 02:17
It's good. Yeah.
Michael Wheaton 02:19
And so have you lived anywhere else? Have you basically been up there in Massachusetts this whole time?
Danielle Rose 02:25
I've pretty much been in the northeast the whole time. I was born in Texas. And I didn't spend very much time there. Pretty much live my whole life in Massachusett. Went to school in capital N New York, and then came back to Massachusetts, and I've been here since.
Michael Wheaton 02:45
How many years were you there?
Danielle Rose 02:47
Oh, just four and a half, five? No, five years or so?
Michael Wheaton 02:51
That's a long time.
Danielle Rose 02:52
Yeah. Yeah, it was five years and then little bits of time. On either side.
Michael Wheaton 02:58
What part did you live in?
Danielle Rose 02:59
It was in Saratoga Springs. I went to Skidmore for my undergraduate.
Michael Wheaton 03:02
And did you study poetry there?
Danielle Rose 03:04
I did. I had an incredible, incredible undergraduate experience that I really credit for giving me most of the foundation that I've needed to really make work now. But I studied with Carolyn Forshay. She was my undergraduate advisor. I spent a lot of time hanging out in the offices of Salmagundi magazine. I was in workshops with Henri Cole and hanging out around Robert Pinsky. And like crazy, famous people. It was quite the experience. It was really, really incredible.
Michael Wheaton 03:43
And so when you went there, did you know that you wanted to study poetry? Or did it kind of develop later in the college-going experience for you?
Danielle Rose 03:52
Oh, no, I was on a straight line. And really, I figured that out in very early high school. My mother was a teacher or my parents, everyone in my family was a voracious reader. You know, going back to grandparents and great grandparents. Books and literature and stories were very important to my family.
Michael Wheaton 04:20
Were there any family favorite books?
Danielle Rose 04:22
We were the kind of family that just tore through books. And so the best book was, you know, the book that you're reading or the next book you're looking forward to reading.
Michael Wheaton 04:33
So was it poetry for you at that time or kind of like when you went to school, you're writing in general and then the specificity of poetry kind of came later? Or was it always you wanted to go and do poetry?
Danielle Rose 04:46
When I was younger, I guess my earliest literature memory (I use the term literature very loosely here) was, I don't even know how old I was, maybe eight years old. And I was dictating Batman stories to my father who is typing them out on our old Apple 2e, which is going to date me right there. And these were Adam West Batman. And that was what I was into when I was a little kid. I was young enough that staying up until like eight o'clock was the treat. It was a treat that I could stay up till eight o'clock and watch Batman on Nick at Night. And yeah, so, you know, this took a huge digression. This is why I took a huge bong rip at the beginning of this. And so Batman aside, that's important because what I really read when I was younger were fantasy and science fiction novels, like some really dime store cheap anything. My mother would come home from the library with a huge stack of books, and they were all just like cheap fantasy. And I would go through the whole thing and read them in a couple nights and just tear through them. And I started reading more literature as I got older. I really in high school, sort of the edgy, early aughts High School phase, it was really into the modernists and all of that, and sort of making my way through what we sort of considered the canon at that point. And I fell in love with poetry. I think it's because poetry is the best medium that is suited to me. And I'm sort of scattered and all over the place. And it's best if I can sort of sit down and do something and put something together in one sitting and the idea of coming up with, you know, 10s of 1000s of words, hundreds of 1000s of words for a novel is just way beyond me. I can't even conceive of being able to do that. Even 1500 words is like, Alright, well, that's getting a little a little difficult here. I don't know if I can keep the thread going. Yeah, I just sort of fell in love with it. And that's what I wanted to do since I was like 14, and I went into my undergrad with an application letter about Rilke. I talked about Rilke in my interview, too. I leaned into it hard.
Michael Wheaton 07:36
Rilke was not even on my radar. I think it wouldn't be years for me.
Danielle Rose 07:42
Oh, gosh. So I was introduced to Rilke actually by. . . Actually, I got into poetry, if you want to be more exacting about this, through punk rock.
Michael Wheaton 07:57
Oh, interesting.
Danielle Rose 07:58
I had gotten into punk when I was an early teen. And I had started going to shows a little bit, but I was still very young and I met these slightly older kids. And started playing a little bit of music with them and going to shows with them. One of them actually went on to become a fairly famous punk rock person. And he showed me when I was like 14, 15, 16, sort of introduced me to like Rilke, Foucault, Adorno, and Sartre, and it just goes on from there, where I read all of the Camus and all of that stuff.
Michael Wheaton 08:48
What did you play? Did you play the guitar, the drums, or the bass?
Danielle Rose 08:52
Oh, I played the guitar really poorly. I'm not much of a musician.
Michael Wheaton 09:00
Yeah, but you can throw some power chords together.
Danielle Rose 09:02
Yeah. In the few sort of successful things I did, I screamed, which is like, I can do that.
Michael Wheaton 09:10
Yeah. I can read Foucault and I can scream.
Danielle Rose 09:14
Read Foucault, write lyrics, and then scream them. I was really good at that when I was younger. I don't think I could do that anymore. I don't think I'd want to do that.
Michael Wheaton 09:25
Too much energy.
Danielle Rose 09:27
Oh, I don't have the energy. Oh, I need a nap halfway through.
Michael Wheaton 09:30
Especially after you take a bong rip. Like that's one of the last things you want to do.
Danielle Rose 09:34
Oh gosh. Like a 10 minute set with a 15 minute intermission in the middle.
Michael Wheaton 09:39
Yeah, I wonder for how many people, especially these days, music is kind of an entryway into poetry. And ultimately writing for people. In a sense, I'm wondering for how many people song lyrics--I mean, it's not like a page poem, but it's kind of like that gateway into writing short things down to convey like a feeling or tell the story or something. I'm saying that because I think it was for me.
Danielle Rose 10:11
You know, I'm more surprised that there aren't more people who come into poetry from punk rock, especially. Music is a gateway into poetry and music is a gateway into art. I think more than anything else, just overall. Popular music and even not so popular music is probably one of the most accessible forms of art that exists in our culture. I don't know, I just I've never really thought about that before. It's like that and television.
Michael Wheaton 10:45
I'm trying to think if I got into music because of television, but I don't think that's true. But maybe it is in a way. Maybe I got into music because of television. And then into art because of music. Do you still--it didn't sound like it--but do you still listen to a lot of punk rock now?
Danielle Rose 11:01
I do actually. I sort of went back and forth for a little while, but I really started to over the last year or so. It's been sort of a pandemic thing, I guess. I've been regressing in some ways. But yeah, I was actually listening to Counterparts to get myself awake and ready to do this before we started. Do you know Counterparts? They're wonderful. I'm mostly a Boston hardcore kid at heart.
Michael Wheaton 11:35
So you're a Boston hardcore kid at heart, right, but one of my favorite things about you that I see on Twitter is your NASCAR and like virtual racing stuff.
Danielle Rose 11:44
Oh no, these two things are not very different. Boston hardcore, I don't know. It's like thug culture. And it's not very different from the sort of NASCAR outlaw culture.
Michael Wheaton 11:59
Is there a lot of country music in Boston? Because to me, I was thinking like, I didn't know there was NASCAR in Massachusetts.
Danielle Rose 12:07
We have some smaller local tracks that do smaller NASCAR things, but yeah, there's racing up here.
Michael Wheaton 12:16
So how do you do virtual racing? Did I see a picture? Like you have this whole setup. Like the seat, and then there's the screens? Then like, a wheel?
Danielle Rose 12:26
Yeah.
Michael Wheaton 12:26
That's so serious. I love it.
Danielle Rose 12:29
I was the top ranked female driver in New England for my Sprint Car Series.
Michael Wheaton 12:36
So how do you get into it? Is it just like a game system? And then you play against people on the internet? Or is it a different organization that runs it?
Danielle Rose 12:46
Well, I'm both sort of. I mean, it's a company, It's a company that's actually in Massachusetts. They're really local, like, I could drive over there if I wanted to. It's a service. Like, it's the best racing with other people that you can do. And there are Pro Series. Like there's a NASCAR series that airs almost every week on Fox Sports One. I just do a little like fun. You know, I'm almost 40. And that's been a long time since I've been in a real race car. But it's a lot of fun. I drive my little sprint cars and pick-ups.
Michael Wheaton 13:28
So you've been in a real race car?
Danielle Rose 13:30
I used to do, you know, very low-level stuff when I was much younger and much stupider. My favorite part about sim racing is how safe it is.
Michael Wheaton 13:39
Well yeah, definitely. But, anyway, you've got your chapbook out from Black Lawrence, At First & Then, and then kind of coming right on its heels now is another one, The History of Mountains. And as I told you, I did enjoy reading both those books, obviously I did, because I asked you to come talk to me about them. But I figured we'd start talking a little bit about At First & Then which won the Black River Chapbook contest for Black Lawrence Press. So, it's kind of an interesting book to me, because it seems like it's a deeply personal book, but it also isn't caught up in specificity and the facts of your life. It feels like something that's kind of close to the bone, but not in a way where it's specifically confessional. Reading it, you don't get the detailed kind of picture of your life. But I think it kind of speaks so much in metaphor and myth. And coming at a lot of things from different angles and evoking a lot of kind of the mind frame and the thoughts and feelings of the poems,. And like one of the blurbs on the back, they call it a transition narrative, but not in the ways it's expected to be. I thought that that was such an interesting thing in the blurb because it called it a narrative, right, but not in the ways it's expected to be because in a way, it's not narrative. So I guess I'm turning this into a question: the way I'm explaining it to you, does that resonate with you at all?
Danielle Rose 15:22
Yeah, absolutely. I think that that's something that I do. I maybe can explain it by saying that I am sort of very New England, and you don't really... I have a great relationship with my parents, because we don't really talk about things, like we don't talk about our problems, you know, those you keep inside and you don't let them out. And I think that that's a tension that ends up in my writing a lot. And especially with At First & Then, I think that there is a tension between these things. It's sort of confessional, but also, a lot of things stay hidden, and you don't really get a full picture of stuff. Because I'm intentionally... it's been described by other people as there's a distance in it. You know, it's very personal, it's very internal, but at the same time, it's everything feels like you're sort of watching at a distance, as opposed to being up close.
Michael Wheaton 16:33
Yeah, and I think because, to me, there feels like a very consistent narrator through the poems and just kind of taking on the situation of your life and looking at it kind of, like I said, from different angles, like, it's the same "I" to me. I don't know how you feel about that. It's the same "I" to me, but it's like the place where the "I" is standing, looking at this situation kind of changes.
Danielle Rose 17:01
No, I have a lot of trust in my reader. I very intentionally want to trust my reader. And I think that my reader is very capable of taking what they need out of something. And I hesitate to maybe call it a technique, but it's sort of an element of my voice that I've been working on for a long time. And I think that At First & Then and The History of Mountains to a certain extent, as well, is probably the most successful that I've been with making that work. And At First & Then, it is a narrative and it does tell a story. And that's accidental.
Michael Wheaton 17:46
Yeah. And when I say like, before, when I'm saying like, it's a narrative, but it really isn't, but I'm also saying it is, because it's not a conventional narrative where there's not points of... like, you're standing here, and then cause and effect and something happens here, and cause and effect and something here, but what makes it such a good chap to me is it does kind of have that cohesiveness from the beginning of the collection to the end. Like reading them in order, you do get a sense of movement and change in the perception and also reckoning with how to put language to it. That's something I like about your poems, too, is it's not just putting the language to it. But reckoning with the fact that you're trying to put language to it. Is that something that finds its way into your work a lot, you kind of wrestling with that like, What am I even doing? What am I even trying to do?
Danielle Rose 18:50
Oh, yeah, that’s where I live: why am I even doing this? What is the point? Yeah, I like writing that's aware of itself as writing. I think that's something that I appreciate, especially in poetry, because the vast majority of the audience for poetry tends to be poets. So you're sort of talking to people who understand the ins and out... and I think there's something a bit unique about poetry that there is this sort of shared experience of creation that we all have, that we all do tap into in our work in one way or another. I think almost every poet ends up writing something that's self-aware at some point, and even if you don't actively work in a self-aware manner, you're still all part of the same conversation, and it sort of links everything together.
Michael Wheaton 19:56
So this book came out fairly recently. And, you know, it was submitted to a contest and won a contest. And then it goes into the publication time in limbo. And so I imagine you must have been finished with the manuscript already quite a long time ago. So I'm kind of wondering, like, the timeframe of where you were at, and kind of what you were doing, as you were drafting and ultimately revising this chapbook. Like, Did you always see it as a chap? Did you think it was going to be longer? Or did you think it was going to be shorter? You know, when did it start? And what was the process with it?
Danielle Rose 20:36
Oh, gosh. I only really started writing again, and submitting at the beginning of...how does time work again? I think, yeah, this is at the beginning of 2019.
Michael Wheaton 20:51
So you had stopped for a while?
Danielle Rose 20:52
I had to stop for a while.
Michael Wheaton 20:56
So what was going on before you started writing again? Like, why did you stop I guess?
Danielle Rose 21:01
I mean, you're just gonna get my life story at this point.
Michael Wheaton 21:04
Well that's good. It's called The Lives of Writers.
Danielle Rose 21:08
Yeah, we can do this, although it's probably gonna be quick, because there's a lot of nothing in there. But yeah, I, so it hasn't been explicitly said. But I'm a trans woman. And I had a bit of a journey to that. And I had a really difficult time of things before I transitioned. And the short version of the story was that things were starting to get really bad for me at the end of my undergrad, and I didn't end up doing an MFA or going on to any other academic pursuit after that, as I always had planned to. I got involved and actually did some really, really, really important work in foreclosure prevention around when the when the housing market collapsed a little over a decade ago. And I did that for a number of years, until I ended up hurting my hands and having to sort of stop working. And one thing led to another and I ended up just being at home, which sort of brings us full circle into everything.
Michael Wheaton 22:21
So how long did you not write for?
Danielle Rose 22:23
It was something like seven or eight years. I did a little bit in the sort of aftermath of graduation. I had some friends who I was doing little workshops with, but then it just sort of petered out, and I stopped doing it. And I didn't really have any concept of what to even do next. And I sort of came out of a time period where most submissions were still done through the postal service. And you didn't have a million little small press outfits that would take your work and give you a start. You know, it was much more difficult. And so I just sort of put it down and focused on other things for a while. And after I transitioned, I ended up starting to write again. I started to read some poetry and get back into it and it was just sort of like riding a bike.
Michael Wheaton 23:21
Was that kind of it, like kind of the reading again just kind of sparked the writing again? Or was it that you got the itch to write and then you were like, And now I must read?
Danielle Rose 23:35
The reading always comes before the writing. The reading causes the writing.
Michael Wheaton 23:40
And was this one of the first project you jumped into? Or what were those writings like as you started writing again. Are these the poems or what were you doing then?
Danielle Rose 23:52
Some of those were those poems, some of those were very early poems. My first and only goal was to get something published. I just wanted to publish one thing, just to prove to myself that I could, and then I was going to go back to not writing. And then that sort of ended up going out the window. Clearly. I started writing At First & Then, which is really the question I think that you want me to get to eventually, it was all written during this about eight-month period. I was writing like wild, just poems and poems and poems, and it was pouring out of me, and a lot of it was pretty good. And it was getting published all over the place. And I knew that I wanted to do a chapbook first and it went through a number of different revisions. It was actually... when this was accepted by Black Lawrence for publication and I was notified that it had won the contest, I had actually done a significant revision and sent it out to other places.
Michael Wheaton 25:13
Ain't that just the way.
Danielle Rose 25:15
Yeah. There's a version of the book that could have existed but doesn't, that I have tucked away on my hard drive, actually, that is significantly different in a lot of ways. And collections can oftentimes be these nice little accidents that just sort of ended up happening.
Michael Wheaton 25:37
So, you mentioned you have a pretty good relationship with your parents, but you don't get into too much stuff. Do they read your writing? Or do you guys steer clear of it?
Danielle Rose 25:52
For the most part, I try to steer them clear of it. I am unable to do this. My parents end up reading it anyway. And I think that At First & Then is something that's a little hard for me to know that my parents are out there reading it.
Michael Wheaton 26:14
Yeah, I imagine. I mean, it's hard enough with my little bullshit. I don't want like my parents reading but you know.
Danielle Rose 26:23
Yeah. Stuff more like The History of Mountains, that's less of a concern. But I mean, my parents are very proud of me. And I know that they're my biggest fans, and they always will be, even if they don't always read the pieces.
Michael Wheaton 26:41
Yeah. That's great. Sometimes it's better when they don't, right.
Danielle Rose 26:44
Yeah, it's always better when they don't, but I can't stop them.
Michael Wheaton 26:48
Get one that slips through the cracks every now and then.
Danielle Rose 26:52
Yeah.
Michael Wheaton 26:52
So is your partner really like... So I always wonder about this with people who are in relationships... does your... well I guess I shouldn't assume... does your partner write as well? Or are you the sole writer in a relationship?
Danielle Rose 27:06
They've been writing a supernatural novel, but it's not really their area.
Michael Wheaton 27:13
So is your partner involved in your writing process at all? Or is it kind of like you finish the book and you're nervous for your partner to read it in the way that you might be nervous for your parents?
Danielle Rose 27:25
Oh, my partner doesn't read anything.
Michael Wheaton 27:27
Oh really?
Danielle Rose 27:28
No, no, nothing. Nothing.
Michael Wheaton 27:29
I know a lot of people in relationships where that's the way it is. And that's cool. That's the way you like it?
Danielle Rose 27:36
I always had a rule I that I never dated other artists. I'm enough. Someone has to be the stable force. And it's not me, and someone has to pay the bills. Yeah, yeah, I prefer it this way. I know nothing about the marketing internet coding stuff that they do. And they don't involve themselves in my writing, and everything is good. We cheer each other on and are supportive, but not involved. I'm telling you, like New England, I'm hermetic. I really don't have too many other writers that I work with on a regular basis. I don't have people that I send stuff to. That's just me.
Michael Wheaton 28:36
That's kind of interesting, too. Because with your parents, you don't normally talk about stuff, or your partner doesn't necessarily look at your writing. So do you just feel like you kind of put it all into the poems, or kind of what I'm saying is like, before, you were saying, you're New England, you don't really talk about that stuff. And it's not a part of your close relationships necessarily. So is it all just like, Alright, well, it's all gonna go into the poetry.
Danielle Rose 29:06
Yeah, I mean, more or less it goes into the poetry or has other ways out. Gosh, I don't know. This pushes like really close to like psychoanalyzing myself.
Michael Wheaton 29:19
Sounds great.
Danielle Rose 29:22
Sounds awful.
Danielle Rose 29:24
I don't know. I strive to minimize affect, which is not really something that you can actually do. But I've been struggling with my thoughts about this recently. It's become sort of more and more obvious to me. Especially over the last year, I've been just trying really hard to keep emotions as far away from my work as I can. I'm really interested, like I just want to try to figure out how to how to make poems with things other than emotion and to use facts and rhetoric. And I don't know, that's what I've been really into. And I think that's a reaction to the last year that everyone's had and what's gone on in the world, and I'm just going off the deep end with some of this. Wow, like second half of this is dark. The world is terrible.
Michael Wheaton 30:19
Well it is.
Danielle Rose 30:19
I can't feel things anymore. Oh my God, awful.
Michael Wheaton 30:26
One thing I was saying earlier was that your work felt like mythic to me. Part of it is because you work with myth. And I think in both books, right.
Danielle Rose 30:39
Oh everywhere.
Michael Wheaton 30:39
In At First & Then, there's Socrates somewhere. And I'm blanking on other stuff, but I remember seeing a bunch of stuff, like the piece you published in Autofocus. And then with The History of Mountains, there's a, I don't know the pronunciation of the Greek, was it like Hero-dotus or Herodotus?
Danielle Rose 30:45
Yeah, Herodotus.
Michael Wheaton 31:02
I feel pretty proud I got it. But the Greeks seem to be a big preoccupation of yours. And kind of like you said, your work is to me somehow able to be personal without the lens being on you. So I guess, obviously this will get into The History of Mountains a little bit because of the Herodotus. But where does your occupation with Greek myth and Greek thought and the Greeks come from and how does it live in your headspace?
Danielle Rose 31:31
It probably comes from being a failed classics major.
Michael Wheaton 31:35
That's a very logical place for it to come from.
Danielle Rose 31:38
Yeah, well I mentioned when I was a teenager, it was very much sort of the modernist tradition. And a lot of the modernist tradition was to study the classics. And I went into school wanting to study the classics. I declared myself as a classics major. I failed Latin II. And then I got kicked out of the classics department. And so I signed up with the English department and basically slept through my classes.
Michael Wheaton 32:14
So you fail Latin II and you gotta go hang out with the scrubs in English, you know.
Danielle Rose 32:18
I know, it's awful.
Michael Wheaton 32:22
That's cool. And so it's still obviously something that you like to read, and then kind of study and pull apart and think about.
Danielle Rose 32:29
I like history and old things because, I don't know, you can take a Greek or Roman figure and do whatever you want to them. They're dead. And their culture has been gone. I mean, it's an academic question of curiosity in history, and you can do whatever you want with them. I'm just sort of interested in these things that we can take and use them for ourselves, because that's the big Anne Carson way of doing it. It's not about who they were then or even what happened. It's about what they mean to us now, be they a vehicle for something, or, you know, I do use them as lenses and vehicles and stand-ins and a way to say, Look at this instead of Look at me.
Michael Wheaton 33:31
It's like look at this in order to look at me in a way, right?
Danielle Rose 33:35
Look at this, but you're really looking at me.
Michael Wheaton 33:37
Yeah, and kind of like myth, metaphor is such an important part of your work, not just when you're making metaphor in the line. But also in the piece itself, or kind of the work as a whole operates on that level as well. And so, one thing I was wondering is--just like with At First & Then--what sparked the conception of this book? Was this something you were working on concurrently or you finished the other projects, and you're like, New project, let's go, this is the idea, and you just kind of ran with it.
Danielle Rose 34:12
Most of The History of Mountains was written in a single sitting.
Michael Wheaton 34:17
Oh wow.
Danielle Rose 34:19
I mean, it's not very long, it's only like 12 pieces.
Michael Wheaton 34:22
Would you call it prose poems, or micro fiction, or something else?
Danielle Rose 34:26
I never really know what to say.
Michael Wheaton 34:28
I never really do either.
Danielle Rose 34:29
It's listed under fiction, so I call it micro fiction. I think that there's not much difference. And I actually tried to, when I submitted this manuscript to Variant in their open period, I specifically submitted it as fiction, because I wanted to prove a point that prose poetry and small fiction was pretty much interchangeable and genre is a lie. Yeah, so now it's officially a fiction book because I was being too smart for my own good or something. I don't know. But yeah, I don't know if there's... I like to call it micro fiction because it is a narrative story. And I think that's the only meaningful difference between a prose poem and a piece of micro fiction is the presence or absence of traditional narrative structures.
Michael Wheaton 35:33
Even though there's a narrative, the way that pieces rub against each other is poetic logic. So it really is not even possible to be one or the other, I guess. But so, you sat down that day, and you kind of had the idea of the form you wanted something to take. And where did the mountains and the character of the mountaineer, and this idea of the history of the mountains, and also kind of the shape of the book... I only just had the digital, but I really loved kind of the design of the book and the way you have it laid out, where you talk about... was it with an avalanche? The steep slope, abundance, weakness, trigger, and then the last part takes on that form. Like that then becomes the form. I know I just asked you like five questions. If there's any of those you can isolate in there.
Danielle Rose 36:28
Yeah. So my method is surprisingly close to automatic writing. I actually consider Keroac probably where I get a lot of my... his methodology is probably most similar to my own in terms of just sitting down and letting the spirit take you and going. I don't do a lot of planning. I do zero planning for the most part. I just sort of write my way into it. What ends up happening is this sort of 10 to 15 page sequence... it's something that I like. It's sort of where my boulder comes to a rest. You know, talking about slopes and avalanches, like it's where the avalanche ends up lying. I like to do these sort of big bursts. And when the motivation hits me, when I have the idea, this comes out. The History of Mountains comes out of my obsession with the age of adventure and the early 20th century, you know, getting again into the modernist period, the sort of last gasp of empire. I'm interested in these men who put themselves at such stupid risk to do something so dumb and stupid, and ultimately meaningless, because they had these humongous ideas both about themselves, and their mythology is about who they were. But the mythologies of nation and like they could save the British Empire from its decline by climbing a mountain. I just sort of, I want them to be my puppets. And I want them to dance for me, because I want to understand why they do these things that they do. And it's a question that I'm never going to really understand. But The History of Mountains comes from Everest, mostly. And George Mallory was a very talented mountain climber in the early 20th century, and he died in 1924 on one of the last attempted summits of Everest before the Second World War just totally solved that until you get into the 50s with Edmund Hillary, and he actually makes it, but what makes Mallory so fascinating is that we don't know if he actually made it to the top or no. He might have actually been the first person to be on the top of Mount Everest. So George Mallory, he was just this wildly arrogant dude and it's sort of the model for the mountaineer in a kind of way. And a lot of it is just my fascination, which is really... you can find a lot of me in the persona character, in the "I" of the book, and it is the sort of interrogation in a way again, sort of going into this writing that is aware of itself in a way. It's me sort of asking my weird brain like, Why are you so into this? What is wrong with you? Why are you following this mountaineer around when he's a jerk to you? And yeah. You could maybe say that this is a parable about ADHD in some ways.
Michael Wheaton 40:51
Perfect.
Danielle Rose 40:52
I think that's a pretty solid interpretation of it, actually.
Michael Wheaton 40:55
Nailed it.
Danielle Rose 40:57
Alright, we're done. We're done. History of Mountains, it's figured out.
Michael Wheaton 41:04
Alright, that's my conversation with Danielle Rose. The History of Mountains ships in a few days if you preorder it, so go do that. Alright, that's it. Thanks for listening.