Ed Rosenthal is a poet and real estate broker in Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) who has been at the epicenter of a decades-long revitalization effort of the historic area. Combining issues as diverse as real estate deals, minority contractors and homelessness, his socially-oriented poetry has been published in venues from large to small to unusual. In 2002 the Wall Street Journal published a series of his rhyming couplets in which he admonished short-sighted developers. A 2003 LA Times feature covered Rosenthal's "Poetic Request for an Extension of Escrow," citing the poetry which helped foster DTLA redevelopment. Rosenthal is the only poet to be published in the magazine of the prestigious Urban Land Institute in Washington D.C., Urban Land.
Rosenthal also performs his poetry publicly, including at Beyond Baroque, events with the LA Community Redevelopment Agency and in old Downtown theaters like The Orpheum. In 2013, he published his collection The Desert Hat (Moonrise Press) based on his near-death experience in the Mojave Desert in 2010. Most recently his poems have been published in various California journals and with the Sierra Club.
He lives in Culver City, California with his wife, Nicole.