Synopses & Reviews
In this wide-ranging collection, Jim Daniels moves from Detroit to Pittsburgh, from childhood to parenthood, meditating on memory and loss, on what we try to dispose of in our own personal landfills, and what we are confronted with in the present moments of our daily lives. He riffs on popular music in the "Esperanto" poems, trying to capture what is universal about music, apart from language, using the only thing at his disposal--language. In "The Tenured Guy" series, he creates an Everyman character to examine some of the less noble aspects of academic life, similar to how he used the character "Digger" to explore factory life in his earlier books. Throughout the book, Daniels' cynicism battles with his sense of wonder. In the face of our bones turning to dust, he seems to argue, we can both experience the pain of laughter and the joy of tears.
Review
Like his poetic forebearers--Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, William Carlos Williams, and Philip Levine, to name but a few--Daniels' work distinguishes itself from many of his contemporaries because of its sustained commitment to the lives of the people we most often overlook or ignore in our culture. . . .
Todd Davis, RattleSometimes we need to read a certain kind of author because we simply have forgotten everything we knew about writing. We think we need a magic pellet, younger energy, more success, or to perform ritual--say like folding our hands and jumping off a building to get started. . . . Jim Daniels, we need you right now because we thought it was too hard to be natural while writing. . . . A real life is here. It lies behind the detail, but the detail is what we want. Jim Daniels' poems are human on the page, growing within and beyond some divine law of poetic order, far away from writers' disasters.
Grace Cavalieri, Producer of "The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress"A poet adept at folding elegant, poetic cranes from the rough newsprint of everyday life.
Christopher Citro, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
About the Author
Jim Daniels has published eleven other books of poetry, along with three collections of short stories. He has also written three films and edited or co-edited four anthologies. His poems have appeared in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies and have been featured on Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac," in Billy Collins' Poetry 180 anthologies, and in Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry series. In addition, his poem "Factory Love" has been reproduced on the roof of a racecar. Other recognitions include the Brittingham Prize for Poetry, The Blue Lynx Poetry Prize, the Tillie Olsen Prize, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.