Blessing The House (Pitt Poetry Series) [Paperback]

Jim Daniels (Author)

Book Description

Series: Pitt Poetry Series | Publication Date: March 6, 1997

In his fourth book of poems, Jim Daniels visits the sites of domestic faith - Catholic schools, sex and marriage, childbirth - in an attempt to witness a world worth believing in.  A sense of search unites these poems, whether they take place on the cement slabs of a 1950s Detroit suburb or on the hillside cemetary of an Italian village.  In their search for hope, grace, and decency in the small dramas of an individual life, the poems of Blessing the House become larger, more overtly political.  They are, as Daniels writes, “prayers for this world, with their clear consequence.”

Editorial Reviews

Review

Banking The Fire
Birch Bark
Blessing The House
Blue Donuts
Cemetery, Torre Gentile
Coming Home From The Hospital After My Son's Birth
The Day After
A Day Of Sainthood
Day Of The Two Bodies
Dear --
Dust Mop
Faith
Faith
Fennel
God's Stopwatch
The Hoagie Scam
Hold-up At The Uni-mart, 98 Degrees
How
Hunger
I Slept With The Singing Nun
Lasting, March, 1994
My Mother's See-through Blouse
Night-light
Poison, Torre Gentile
Polish-american Night, Tiger Stadium
Running
Silk
Sin Sandwich
Skull And Crossbones
The Sleeper Hold
Sleeping On Trains, Sleeping On Boats
Spell
Spring Sap
Spy Club
The Stigmata
Three Bridges, Pittsburgh
What I Did
Where Else Can You Go
Where Else Can You Go
Where Else Can You Go
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Daniels searches through the darkness of his past with the revealing flashlight of his language. He shows how what was is still turning in his life; he shares the echoes he hears; he sways in the circles of time, and with him we discover the still burning ashes of memory. . . . -- West Branch

Reflecting upon death and our ability to move on after the initial shock, these poems resonate with meaning not only for the individual self, but for society at large. . . . Daniels manages "to overcome the paradox of the death of too many and the pain of so many more, yet to still continue as if existence made any sense at all. -- POETRY INTERNATIONAL II

The book's power lies in its generous, stable sense of moral gravity-with its author not preaching above us but working things out beside us. -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

These are tender, moving, and nostalgic poems about an American life, beautifully wrought and vividly close to the experience of all of us born in small towns. -- Carolyn Kizer

[Daniels's] talent remains as strong and defiant as ever. . . . What appeals to me most in these new poems is how Daniels experiences the world he moves in and through. He feels it with his entire self. -- Samuel Hazo, Carnegie Magazine --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press; 1 edition (March 6, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822956365
• ISBN-13: 978-0822956365
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,577,681 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fine poet!, September 24, 2004

By 

Allegheny Al (Pittsburgh) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blessing The House (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

In the evolution of Jim Daniels's concerns as a poet, we see a steady movement over the last twenty years away from the struggles with the pressures of society and toward the confrontation with the difficulties of existence itself. Daniels's first two books, Places/everyone and Punching Out, illustrate the implacable reality of blue collar jobs. The gritty details of the poems are drawn primarily from a Detroit auto factory where the workers are abused by the bosses and by their fellow workers. His third book, M-80, shows the neighborhood where the autoworkers and their families live. There is no sentimentality here. The neighborhood is full of tough teenagers and wild children, and the adults are often abusive and ignorant. In the long poem Time, Temperature, the trust that the younger generation has in the wisdom of their elders is destroyed by the paranoid racism of the speaker's grandfather. This bleak view of urban life, and of Daniels's own childhood, is mitigated only by the rough love of family, but when family life goes awry, there is no balance to the harsh demands of work and the terror of violence in the streets. Dedicated to his two children, Blessing the House, Daniels's fourth book, has a softer tone. Perhaps the poet has temporarily made peace with the struggles of life, or perhaps he has simply created a safer and more loving environment for his own children than he himself had growing up.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant narrative from a great contemporary poet, November 13, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Blessing the House (Pitt Poetry) (Hardcover)

A strong voice in contemporary poetry. Though his early works deal primarily with factory life, this latest collection deals with life as a father and observer. He captures the situations that go on around us everyday that we are usually too busy to appreciate for what they are. a brilliant collection.