Late Invocation for Magic

“The poetry of Jim Daniels springs from a deep well of compassion for the working class, their plundered cities and their plundered lives. His sharp eye surveys the landscapes of Detroit and Pittsburgh, his uncles struggling against alcoholism, his aunts scraping by on the wages of fast-food restaurants. His clear voice speaks for the fallen, from the company men who played by the rules and lost anyway to a child killed in a hit-and-run accident. Yet the poet finds dignity and redemption in the grace of baseball or the consolation of the human touch, spirituality in spite of churches, love in the mist of pesticide.” —Martin Espada, professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, National Book Award for Poetry winner for Floaters

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“Jim Daniels’ poetry explores not only the realities of a blue collar, late 20th Century, upper Midwest childhood, but the entirety of America’s sociocultural whirlwind throughout these last six decades. Few writers believe more deeply in poetry’s capacity to document the world, and documentation, in his hands, is a form of homage.” —Campbell McGrath, author of twelve full-length collections of poetry

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“Jim Daniels is a generous, inventive poet with great emotional range and insight. He is at home writing poems about home—the domestic space, child-rearing, marriage, aging, ambition—with honesty, intimacy, and grace….Jim Daniels is humorous, provocative, and smart—an American treasure.” —Denise Duhamel, professor at Florida International University, author of several poetry collections, including Second Story and Blowout

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“Jim Daniels keeps getting better, going deeper into his lived life to find there the language of celebration, lamentation, victory, defeat, moral ambiguity, and political and social outrage. He curses what needs to be cursed, he blesses what needs to be blessed, and he stands in silent awe and wonder at the world turning about him, a world of unaccountable suffering and unaccounted-for beauty.” —Li-Young Lee, author of The Invention of the Darling

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