In Stereo Press

If I may first, quote from their entire bio for support,

“Serena and Dan are Colorado natives, born and raised in the ‘burbs. Once they escaped, they fell madly in love with things that make little sense. Dan eventually became the high ruler of a small island, where Serena stationed her troops during an impending takeover of Daniel and his servants. After battling it out for two decades, the two realized they both liked flamingos and fairs, and the rest is the history created in their first chapbook, Fantastic Flamingo Fair. There is currently little animosity between the two, although Daniel often misses tyranny, and Serena, hostile takeover. Both are currently students of many schools, love love love art (of all kinds and genres), and are always looking for others to collaborate with.”

When I first engaged with this package, which includes a chapbook by Serena Chopra entitled, The Land of Many Uses, and an untitled CD with music by Daniel McDonald, I was taken aback by the beautiful details that they had put into the presentation. It’s amazing when someone can go to an open mic and get their hands on a FREE chapbook and CD. It’s even better when you get to hear both the music and poetry performed in the same night.

The Land of Many Uses is, at first, a beautiful book just to look at. This is not your plain old Times New Roman, recycled paper chapbook. The entire book is illustrated by Serena and Daniel. The colors jump off the page and create spaces of clarity and harmonious confusion. The opening page gets the reader ready with a picture a girl staring into a darkness, a portal perhaps. There is no telling where this will take you, or if this is even the beginning. The first poem is titled VI, so are we somewhere in the middle of a journey? According to the page prior to this poem, where the reader is asked to turn the book upside down then back again, our world, our perspective, even our senses won’t be the same. Throughout the book Serena showcases her attention to the lyric voice and her attention to detailed, though abstract, images. One of my

favorite lines, “There’s no water, collect sweat/ tomorrow, to boil tonight, salt, see”. I love the gentle desperation sparingly shadowing the lightness of the desire in these lines. Another great moment in the book is in these lines, “measure the subtle differences/ between moment and memory”. Serena really takes these lines to heart and measures carefully all the way through the book. She pays close attention to how the illustrations play a part in conjuring up emotion, when needed, and confusion, when needed. There are some moments where the colors start to distract from the reading, but these are specifically subtle and measured. I keep going back and reading and rereading and I find myself fascinated by the connections with painting, for that matter, the arts other than poetry, this writing has. I appreciate Serena’s use of light and dark, small minimalistic strategies with form and then, jumping right into a larger space of lengthy verse. It is great to see a writer who is comfortable with changing form, using a loose sense of landscape and allowing, for what I can tell, the poem to curl up or stretch out on the page. I think Serena says it perfect in poem VIII, “The dilute morning, wine-spilled sky/ is an existence like loose canvas–”.

In the essay The Relations between Poetry and Painting, by Wallace Stevens, he writes:

“The paramount relation between poetry and painting today, between modern man and modern art is simply this: that in an age in which disbelief is so profoundly prevalent or, if not disbelief, indifference to questions of belief, poetry and painting, and the arts in general, are, in their measure, a compensation for what has been lost.”

It seems that, sometimes in these United States, art is a forgotten cultural aspect. In many ways it is, and what Wallace Stevens is talking about still holds true today. In our world right now, this generation of writers and artists, are that compensation for what is missing in our culture. The only difference is the audience has to come out and dig deep to find what it is that they are searching for, what it is that will fill that void for them. The art, the poets, they’re out there creating beautiful work. You just have to know where to look, and in the case of Serena Chopra, look no further.

There is only one way to accurately describe the voice that comes from the body of Daniel McDonald. Unfortunately, I don’t have the words, myself, to tell you. But I do know where to get those words. First, I want to say that it is a pleasure to have seen this man play and sing live. It’s hard to believe, that when Daniel sings, the air doesn’t stop, if that’s at all possible. The feeling that he exudes from his performances has a name, it’s called Duende. In an essay by Federico Garcia Lorca called, Theory and Function of the Duende, he says of Duende:

“Thus the duende is a power and not a behaviour, it is a struggle and not a concept. I have heard an old guitarist master say : ‘The duende is not in the throat; the duende surges up from the soles of the feet.’ Which means that it is not a matter of ability, but of real live form; of blood; of ancient culture; of creative action.”

On the first track, the listener is sent straight into that feeling. A guitar comes in from the echo with vocals that sound as if they’ve traveled back from the mouths of great folk singers. Once the listener is comfortable and sitting back enjoying the pluck of the nylon strings, they are sucked straight back to the present. From the distance, or closer than one thinks, are the whispers of a woman cryptically touching that part of the brain we hardly go to with music. Daniel has a very versatile sound that he layers and layers onto top of itself to create these sound-scapes that leaves the listener amazed that they are hearing all of this from one mouth and acoustic guitar. On track 8, Daniel puts down a fearless instrumental that one wouldn’t think would be on such a vocally driven CD. But he does, and with great success. Some of my favorite moments on the CD are the times when a note or chord is played and it is slightly out of tune. This does not slow Daniel down and in fact he uses these places to his advantage allowing the audience to never forget the human factor of the music. Which is what one has here, music that is driven with human likeness. Just like any of us, we can be in tune with the rest of our body, but at times we can be too loud, too fast, and slightly sharper. I highly recommend Daniels CD. Also I encourage all of you to try and find him so that you can hear him sing live.

You can contact Serena Chopra and Daniel McDonald at:

Serena.Chopra@Colorado.edu // Mcdonadg@colorado.edu