Vernacular Literary Blog

Halfsteps + Cloudfang (Plumberries Press, 2011)

You know what they say: life is a cycle, life goes by so fast, life is what you make of it, et cetera et cetera. Contingent with these clichés, life can feel like a lackluster merry-go-round enclosed by a collapsible gate with a toothless carnie pulling all the levers. It seems paradoxical, given its wild nature, but Daniela Olszewska’s Halfsteps + Cloudfang is here to make out the images for you, to describe the experiences that move too fast to distinguish or put your hands on from high up on your plastic pony.

Each poem is compressed with punchy sonic pleasures: “she made them / ground-dumb // with leg-lag / + scratch-patch”; “all pearled / by proxy” and her games with syntax add surprise to the already surprising: “especially unfortunate / is just who exactly / you think you are during / the low temperature / portion of the program” and “bracelets made / of black pot // + blacker kettle / parts stolen special.” Each break leads deeper into an unsuspecting image and a more exciting way of telling. This poetic move is the building blocks to a voice whose power swells throughout. It is not annoying or uncomfortably confrontational, but statements are always made with the kind of sass that is authoritative and unwilling to bend. Lines like: “I don’t think we are forever / yet, don’t go waiting for me / to start unslinging my insides / any time even close to soon” are embarrassing for whoever the direct address is intended for, as if to say “Duh, don’t make me repeat myself.”

Halfsteps + Cloudfang handles the subjectivity of the first person gracefully and reflexively. For example, in “garden partying for dummies,” Olszewska folds the classic Adam and Eve evolution story into itself by acknowledging the constructs of Eve and all she represents, all the while illuminating the absence of subjectivity for herself. She refers to “[the theoretical ‘i’]” as someone entirely separate (“[the theoretical ‘i’] + i kept gasping after / our secondtolast breath”), recognizing the small death that occurs regardless; how blame is often the first response to Eve but it is secondary to the idea of losing yourself based on one misstep, how an entire identity can be constructed off that. Moments of telling the story are sandwiched between moments of introspection and the poem is trying to show you that we classically have a hard time differentiating between the two.

The titles are delightfully quirky, edgy (“her semi-successful recipe for swampthings,” “you look sensational; you look barely related to me,” and “winter dosages for the emotionally challenged,” to name my favorites) and are congruous with the voice that carries throughout unlike this recent trend to title a tame poem something like “A Collection of Disembodied Prostitute Arms on the Mantle Next to the Gun.” You are lassoed in but leave the poem thinking, “What the fuck, I want my money back.” It’s like trying ecstasy for the first time but you’re on prescription anticonvulsants so the whole thing is a bust. Olszewska’s poems compel you to massage Vick’s vapor rub into your temples for an hour, as you lay entranced by the moving LED neon lights blinking inside. This is to say she delivers the Good Shit, none of that star etched into a tablet of Tylenol back-alley tripe.

In a time where publishing in moving toward the digital and incorporating technology in its production to innovate and enhance the final product, Halfsteps + Cloudfang keeps it old school. The ink illustrations beside the poems give the chapbook a rich texture of multimedia while the actual DIY quality lends itself to a more personal experience. The chapbook has zine flair but does not let aesthetics fall to the wayside. In fact, it is refreshing to have a book in your hands where you can tell that the production team for it was just as meticulous, careful, and passionate as the poet who crafted the poems inside. The medium is the message, right? So the message here must be ‘crafty’ and ‘cool’; Olszewska and Plumberries Press are on the same page with that one.