…
Aliah Rosenthal, the son of poets, grew up in the East Village with the Poetry Project at Saint Mark’s Church a few blocks away.
Contrary to what may be a popular opinion, being the child of a poet is auspicious. Poetry is empathetic, it sees unity in disparate things, and hearing it spoken at a young age, helps one to see the world around and spread one’s wings. In Aliah’s case, he often travels to Europe to work with the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and continues to work on many projects there.
Vehicle Editions just published a book of poems by Aliah called Kiss My Asteroid. I find that Annabel Lee, the publisher, always makes her books into works of art. In my blog posts, when I’m featuring a poet’s new book, I’ll type out a few poems to give the reader an idea of the work, but for Kiss My Assteroid, I’m not going to type, but scan for the reader to have a look at a few of the actual pages.
Kiss My Assteroid is observant and funny, as audible as it is readable, you can hear it loud and clear, a reassuring shout. There is something in the layout and the positioning of the words that remind me of Allen Ginsberg, who happens to be Aliah’s godfather, but these poems are not Allen’s, they are the poet’s alone.
Over the summer, the Rosenthal family was in the city, and I asked Aliah to come over to my place so I could record him. In the Vimeo below, he reads from Kiss My Asteroid. Enjoy.
In the Vimeo that follows is the whole reading at Von Bar that was arranged by Annabel Lee and Vehicle Editions:
…
You can check out Kiss My Assteroid here:
**NEW** Kiss My Assteroid / Aliah Rosenthal / 2025 / 30 pages / Vehicle Editions, New York – Rosenthal Rosenthal Rosenthal
No Description
And you can find out more about Aliah Rosenthal (check out the videos!) here:
Aliah Alec Rosenthal | Poetry | Music | NYC
Aliah Rosenthal is a poet and artist from New York City.
