Night With Drive-By Shooting Stars (New Issues Poetry & Prose) [Paperback]

Jim Daniels (Author)

Book Description

Series: New Issues Poetry & Prose | Publication Date: February 2002

Poetry. Jim Daniels' latest collection bears witness to a life boat mis- and well-spent; to the family, remembered and new; to the melancholy pull of drugs and casual sex; to growing up; and to the only tenable way of growing old, which is to embrace every small joy even as one laments its brevity. Indeed, Night with Drive-By Shooting Stars rages not against the dying of light but the dying fall itself-against poetic and existential complacency. "Louder, kids," says Daniels in the beautiful "Cold Seed": "daddy's dying."

Editorial Reviews

Review

"He captures... the sounds of North American city speech, illuminating our everyday experiences in the common tongue." -- The Village Voice

"Not to read him at all is to miss a most important and original contemporary." -- Robert McDowell, The Hudson Review

About the Author

Jim Daniel’s awards include the Brittingham Prize for Poetry, and Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He lives in Pittsburgh.

Product Details

• Paperback: 57 pages
• Publisher: New Issues Poetry & Prose; 1 edition (February 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1930974159
• ISBN-13: 978-1930974159
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,625,740 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid, real, evocative, February 3, 2003

By 

Catherine S. Vodrey (East Liverpool, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Night With Drive-By Shooting Stars (New Issues Poetry & Prose) (Paperback)

Jim Daniels' "Night with Drive-By Shooting Stars" is grounded in place and family and marriage. It resounds with the echoes of people reaching out to one another--sometimes successfully, often not. As in his other poetry volumes, both Michigan and Pennsylvania are key characters (Daniels was reared outside Detroit, and has lived in Pittsburgh for two decades). One of the very first poems has to do with his ambivalence about the idea of his parents leaving the home he grew up in:

"Stay, I say. I keep a few boxes
in the basement--old records,
magazines, books. A little weight
to hold them there so I can imagine
some constant thing."

"Strip" is an astonishing poem. Daniels limns the awkward pas-de-deux of two people who scarcely know each other, but are both seeking physical intimacy. The fact that they are mostly strangers is captured perfectly at the end of the poem:

" . . . She whispered
in my ear, and I pulled the blankets
up over us. I knew her name,
so I whispered that."

When he moves on to marriage and family, Daniels does equally well--the images are pungent, stark in their simplicity, resonant with truth. The poems he writes for and about his two children are especially good--true, loving, but dispassionate in observed detail. This is a fine work of a mature and skilled American poet.