Ask the Author: Daniela Olszewska

Daniela Olszewska’s three poems will grab your attention in the December issue. She talks with us about the imagery in her poetry, obsessions with themes and fights with toxic rodents.

1. What kind of influence would you like on gerbils?

kantian with a dash of mercury in retrograde

2. How do you craft such images as “a brain wet with rural afterhours”? What does your beat lab look like?

i love that you used the verb ‘craft.’ none of these images were birthed from spontaneous flashes of divine-mad-poet-genius-inspiration—they’re the product of twenty-to-thirty careful tweakings. i get a lot of use out of the thesaurus.com (i’m a bit ashamed of this, but i’m not entirely sure why…maybe i feel as if i’m cheating, as if all the real poets don’t need reference books?). the images i make usually start out really bulky—like, proust-level bulky—so i spend a lot of time with my finger on the delete button.

my beat lab has a blue chaise lounger and a plastic christmas tree. also, a desk, but it’s covered in every item of clothing i own, so i mostly just sit on the chaise with my laptop and a giant cup of coffee.

3. Would you fight a toxic squirrel?

only if the squirrel slapped me across the cheek with its glove, insulted my betrothed’s honor, and then challenged me to duel at sunrise.

4. How do you become obsessed with a theme? How do you place a restraining order on yourself when you’ve become too obsessed with a theme?

i wish i had a better understanding of how obsession works—it seems that by the time i realize i’m obsessing over a subject, it’s too late to reign it in. some of this can get ‘fixed’ during editing. recently, i started enforcing a one animal/poem rule. there are a lot of wild birds and domesticated rodents sitting in my laptop’s trash can.

5. What would you pin your lingerie to?

book contest submissions, christmas trees, fan letters to steve buscemi, scarecrows, taxidermied animals, tithes

6. How do you like your weather vanes to look?

height/weight proportionate