David Tomaloff builds things out of ampersands and light. His work has appeared in several chapbooks, anthologies, and in fine publications such as Metazen, Heavy Feather Review, The Northville Review, CBS Chicago, Necessary Fiction, HTML Giant, A-Minor, Pank, and elimae. He is also co-author of the collaborative poetry collection YOU ARE JAGUAR, with Ryan W. Bradley (Artistically Declined Press, 2012). Send him threats: davidtomaloff.com---------
David Tomaloff interview with Meg Tuite
David Tomaloff, poet, astral-projector, nomad during salt seasons, keeper of the Yeti, founder of the Church of multiple free choice for the people of the Mid-West and Puerto Rico and closeted toenail biter, I'm so honored to finally be featuring your pure brilliance here at Connotation Press. Thank you for sending us these five gems that actually glowed in the dark when I printed them out and sat with them in the bathroom. There are so many things I want to know. I am mesmerized by your work. I wanted to ask about your process. Do you sit down and just smack it out in one sitting or do you sit for years and feed the pigeons out in the park and contemplate?
Mostly drones. I dress my pets as weather balloons. We make up pet names for the sea. I chain my thoughts to certain radiators & simmer sound to taste. There is always a reason to forget to exist. Best to forget words like process. Dig up stolen radios, the kind with the silver linings. Set the needle stuck between stations—they will tell you all that you will never think to say.
Tell me about the place where you keep the Yeti. I know you spend a lot of time out in these amazing places. I've seen some of the photographs from your incredible wife, Jen.
What it is that most inspires you?
The Yeti is a thing we keep in these woods. We bring these woods with us every place that we go. Most times we bring these woods to the woods because it just makes sense. Any woods will play nicely with these woods. We find them, & the Yeti follows. What most inspires me is a long list of everything that is mostly not made of people or their people talk. What most inspires me more is the dirt language spoken under the leaves where no one thinks to listen. We put all of our ears there & then we wait there for the sun to falter. Sometimes we walk back in the dark. It is during these dark walks that we learn what it means to be small—when the language is ours & all of the ears are on us, & the Yeti becomes all we are not.
Everything you write is poetry. That is truth and beauty. Who are you reading now and what is your favorite beverage? And do you read and drink simultaneously?
At this moment, Shane Jones is speaking at me about a never ending February & how to defeat it, probably using Light Boxes. He will soon tell me something about fighting hurricanes but his name will then be Daniel. Daniel maybe walks with tigers. idk. Rob Walsh, Andrew Zawacki, Anne Carson, & Kristina Marie Darling are all waiting patiently to tell me more things. J. A. Tyler recently spoke at me about deer-brothers & their daughters, & Blake Butler recently said some things about Saws that are up in the Sky. Oh, & that Anders Monson fellow made sounds about electricity that I enjoyed. There was snow.
Iced tea is a beverage I might call my favorite that is not made of MONSTER. In the winter, people look at me like I have just pulled down my pants & my dick is made of spiders because “iced tea in the winter?” even though the cooler is stocked with 6800 different kinds of beer, all advertised as “ice cold.” Also, when I order the iced tea, people say to me things like “sweetened?” & I say “of course not, that’s Kool-Aid; iced tea is made only of iced & tea.” Can we just agree to agree on that? Ok, thanks.
Yes, I do everything simultaneously. I do some of the things at different times, but I do them incredibly fast.
Hahaha! I can’t tell you how much I adore you! I know you love music. Your work is pure rhythm and cadence. Can you give us a link to a favorite song of yours?
Music is also a life of mine, yes. Music was a thing I did long before I did anything that looks like writing. Choosing a favorite song would be like choosing the best molecule in a glass of water. Where would I begin?
Oh. I know. With water.
Unless you literally meant a favorite of mine, in which case I might direct you here.
The work you do with Marc Swoon Neys is mind-blowing! Absolutely mesmerizing! How does film work in to your poetry? Do you have a favorite film? Director?
I wouldn’t say that film works into my own work all that often, or at least not directly or consciously. Working with Swoon is an experience in & of itself—it’s synergistic. It’s the sort of relationship that just works in that we both do our own things, & those things come together—without a whole lot of deliberation—to make a bigger thing. There is another of those currently in the works.
I think much of my favorite visual work seems to be tied to musical presentations. I like documentaries, too. As for movies, “Apocalypse Now” has been a long standing favorite. I will watch any Denzel movie at least once, but I love “Man on Fire.” Also, & I am not attempting irony in saying so, this particular “film” might be one of my new all-time favorites.
Do you have a day job out there within the manswarm? When are your best hours to write?
I AM A VERY IMPORTANT SOMETHING, which carries with the title many responsibilities. Several hats will be worn on a given day, including but not limited to that of lion tamer, personal transportation agent, domestic sanitization & wardrobe cleaning & compartmentalization specialist, & then sometimes I get to microwave stuff too, if I’m good.
My best hours to write are my best hours to breathe. If I can do one, then I can safely attempt the other. I do the most during the quiet hours of the night, but I will open things to make small edits or jot down phrases whenever possible. I keep a file & a notebook in which I stash ideas that have no body. I have a basement & a garage in which I stash bodies that have no ideas. Only one of those statements is true.
I would go with B on that one. What do you love to do when you're not writing, reading?
Mostly I poke the dirt with a stick & wait for it to move. When it moves I move with it & I stay on for as long as I can. Also, I ride things with wheels & pedals, & I walk the great distances through the green & lush in search of more dirts to poke with a stick that will move & also move with me in turn. Many times through the green & lush on wheels & pedals or feet & shoes, I will have on my person a special light recorder of dirt & things. Some have called the light-things photography. Others have asked what light the eye is recording. I have told them, “Oh just the things.” People are so terribly suspicious of recorders. Also, reading, yes.
I believe the ‘dirts’ love you. And they wait in anticipation of a poke from you. Any chance you'll let us in on what you're working on right now?
Yes. There is a chance. I have a couple of chapbooks coming out in the near future (though I don’t know exactly when). One will be part of an experimental series put out by NAP. The other will be a collection of a/b scenarios—prose poems—put out by Plain Wrap, titled “Sleep.” I am currently working on a series of ekphrastic poems with footnote counterparts, inspired by Scott Solter’s remixes of the John Vanderslice album “Pixel Revolt.” Yet another is a project I am doing that involves a short cycle of poems & the art of Tracy Jager, which I am absolutely excited about. That project is currently titled “IN MEDIAS RES.”
The dirts can’t even relay how happy I am about these new projects!
Who are your greatest influences as writers?
I am both fortunate & possibly cursed in that I am able to say that my greatest writing influences are those alive & writing today. My path to writing is one that came later in life. In my younger years, I’d read the books that we must all read, but I never cared about them much. They didn’t speak to me about my life or the lives of the people I knew. They were homework, things to be skimmed & faked on tests. In this sense, I am not what one would call well-read in the classics of the literary tradition. Those that I had read, I approached badly, & so I treat them as if I’d never read them—something that I am working my way backwards to recover whenever I can.
As a young musician, I liked the books that many young musicians tend to like: Bukowski, Baudelaire, Cummings, Neruda, Dante, Kerouac, Burroughs, Williams, etc. It’s no great surprise that poetry became the default. I like fiction, but the fiction I like feels a lot like poetry to me—folks like Peter Markus, Blake Butler, J. A. Tyler, Cormac McCarthy, & Shane Jones, to name a few.
My favorite current poets tend to be folks like Andrew Zawacki, Zachary Schomburg, Ben Mirov, Kristina Marie Darling, Eric Baus, and many others of course. It probably isn’t the coolest thing to say, but folks like these have helped to change the way I look at language. It’s a bonus that these folks are people I’m in contact with (or can be) regularly. If such an outlet as the internet had been around much earlier in my life, my relationship to reading & writing would have likely been every bit as strong as my relationship to music.
I found that my best education as a writer came in the library, not in any school. What was your experience with formal education?
I did exceptionally well in school until I became bored with it, got cocky, & took to cutting class in high school. I was an introvert finally developing an attitude, so it was never to smoke or party or hang with friends. Instead, I spent time alone listening to music, learning to play, or learning just about anything that I could, really. I actually skipped school to visit museums & libraries & to read technical books & practice sheet music. Who does that?
David Tomaloff does that and he is the magnet that holds the forest together. I had trauma as a child when I bit into a twinkie that was green on the inside. Do you have any trauma you'd like to share? (I mean, twinkies will outlast the planet like cockroaches and commas.)
Trauma, yes. That I would like to share. We’ll keep it nice to protect the names of the not so innocent. I was eating dinner at my grandmother’s house when, for the first time, I’d bitten into a piece of chicken & the red & blue lines running through it snapped into focus the gritty truth that had until then escaped my small & happy mind—how sometimes a word like chicken can simply mean chicken. That kind, yes. What did you think it was?
I assumed it was chicken with rib meat from unknown mammals. Either way, it’s a trauma that may never be answered. Do you know where your cats and dogs are at this moment?
I can’t thank you enough, David Tomaloff, for your being, your brilliance and your undeniable you. I am a huge fan! Thank you so much for sending Connotation Press some of your inimitable work and for letting us feature some of the you of you!
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