Ebook179 pages1 hour
Gun/Shy
By Jim Daniels
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
The poems in Gun/Shy deal with the emotional weight of making do. Tinged with both the regrets and wisdom of aging, Jim Daniels’s poems measure the wages of love in a changing world with its vanishing currency. He explores the effects of family work—putting children to bed, leading parents to their final resting places—and what is lost and gained in those exertions. Childhood and adolescence are examined, through both looking back on his own childhood and on that of his children. While his personal death count rises, Daniels reflects on his own mortality. He finds solace in small miracles—his mother stretching the budget to feed five children with "hamburger surprise" and potato skins, his children collecting stones and crabapples as if they were gold coins.
Daniels, as he always has, carries the anchor of Detroit with him, the weight both a comfort and a burden. He explores race, white privilege, and factory work. Eight Mile Road, a fraught border, pulses with division, and the echoes of music, singing through Detroit’s soiled but solid heart, resonate in these poems. His first long poem in many years, "Gun/Shy," centers the book. Through the personas of several characters, Daniels dives into America’s gun culture and the violent gulf between the fearful and the feared.
Throughout, he seeks connection in likely and unlikely places: a river rising after spring rain and searchlights crossing the night sky. Comets and cloudy skies. Cement ponds and the Garden of Eden. Adolescence and death. Wounds physical and psychic. Disguises and more disguises. These are the myths we memorize to help us sleep at night, those that keep us awake and trembling. Daniels’s accessible language, subtlety, and deftness make this collection one that belongs on every poetry reader’s shelf.
Daniels, as he always has, carries the anchor of Detroit with him, the weight both a comfort and a burden. He explores race, white privilege, and factory work. Eight Mile Road, a fraught border, pulses with division, and the echoes of music, singing through Detroit’s soiled but solid heart, resonate in these poems. His first long poem in many years, "Gun/Shy," centers the book. Through the personas of several characters, Daniels dives into America’s gun culture and the violent gulf between the fearful and the feared.
Throughout, he seeks connection in likely and unlikely places: a river rising after spring rain and searchlights crossing the night sky. Comets and cloudy skies. Cement ponds and the Garden of Eden. Adolescence and death. Wounds physical and psychic. Disguises and more disguises. These are the myths we memorize to help us sleep at night, those that keep us awake and trembling. Daniels’s accessible language, subtlety, and deftness make this collection one that belongs on every poetry reader’s shelf.
Author
Jim Daniels
Jim Daniels’s recent books include Apology to the Moon, Birth Marks, and Eight Mile High (stories). He is also the writer/producer of a number of short films, including The End of Blessings. Born in Detroit, Daniels is the Thomas Stockham Baker University Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
Read more from Jim Daniels
Rowing Inland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Line for the Exterminator: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBirth Marks Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Gun/Shy
Related ebooks
Ideal Cities: Poems Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sh*t City Chronicles: Tales of Pain, Passion, and Civil Wrongs in America's Recent Past Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBreathing Lake Superior Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What Small Sound Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRISE: An Anthology of Change Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStill Waters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Compassion, Michigan: The Ironwood Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSixfold Poetry Winter 2017 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Human Body is a Hive Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Web of Life: Weaving the Values That Sustain Us Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThis Bell Still Rings: My Life of Defiance and Song Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHook and Pitch: 32 Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMother Chicago: Truant Dreams and Specters Over the Gilded Age Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShattered Love: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thaw: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girls of Peculiar Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Philomath: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5And the Bridge Is Love Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Never Catch Me Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5We Live in Bodies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe People Under the House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Men: Eighty Writers on How to Be a Man Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA World of Stone: New and Selected Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSaol: Thoughts from Ireland on Life & Living Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe President's Child: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I Only Know Who I Am When I Am Somebody Else: My Life on the Street, On the Stage, and in the Movies Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Leftovers: Surviving Family, Religion, and the American Dream Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Final Fire: A Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Nature of Shadows: An African Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
General Fiction For You
The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shantaram: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Second Life of Mirielle West: A Haunting Historical Novel Perfect for Book Clubs Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Candy House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything's Fine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meditations: Complete and Unabridged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beartown: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Recital of the Dark Verses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cabin at the End of the World: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Gun/Shy
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
1 rating0 reviews
Book preview
Gun/Shy - Jim Daniels
Pz-a book_preview_excerpt.html Yr6}L3lz<8qk9˭f$$" c5Q${@t;4s=^,Ҟ_gD.;/>`Zdz|[ޟg?+q-V&Jp
K:C-)ey{qL5
lK7A6/D&RN5~fY)ۄ8-WFe^6*DjqCc\\mvS*a3iK](Rd8F
. 4OڇP+D$\a+$V?J|nR69W+VK rJ"2oD S3}*Y(
.vxUѥkcël\+;.7!Xb[N@M']Jq*eJ:7$QMsa\)6 HC)
#qpW
X;:k~>k(WX᪔at;SSmu 98֪H]kAWRTfM#!..J+GϥSxih3rݴx',jtzk%sYiO.],`0plxq(ؕxB{"kAGO
y /ZlivM)\EK6|ظ
U)RJ.#2Ibm6ژD N(ph}lB ε