Jim Daniels
Jim Daniels is the author of seven books of poems, Places/Everyone (1985),
winner of the Brittingham Prize for Poetry, University of Wisconsin Press; Punching Out
(1990), Wayne State University Press; M-80 (1993), University of Pittsburgh Press;
Niagara Falls (1994), Adastra Press; Blessing the House (1997), University of
Pittsburgh Press, and Blue Jesus (2000), Carnegie Mellon University Press, and Night
with Drive-By Shooting Stars, New Issues Press (2002). His most recent chapbook, Digger's
Blues, was published by Adastra Press in 2002. His second book of short stories, Detroit
Tales, will be published by Michigan State University Press in 2003. His first book of
stories, No Pets, was published in 1999 by Bottom Dog Press. In addition, he has
edited or co-edited four anthologies of poetry, including Letters to America:
Contemporary American Poetry on Race, Wayne State (1995), and American Poetry: The
Next Generation, Carnegie Mellon (2000). He also wrote the screenplay for "No
Pets," an independent feature film directed by Tony Buba (Braddock Films), and wrote
"Heart of Hearts," a one-act play produced at the 13th Street Repertory Theater
in New York. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His poems have appeared in the Pushcart Prize and Best
American Poetry anthologies. He is a Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University,
where he directs the Creative Writing Program and has received teaching awards from the
University and from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. He lives in Pittsburgh
with the writer Kristin Kovacic, and their two children Ramsey and Rosalie.
Jim Daniels writes:
I’ve always been interested in narrative poetry, and in recent years I’ve done
quite a bit of work using simultaneous narratives—more than one narrative in the same
poem—under the assumption that sometimes you can get the same energy going between
two stories in one poem that you get between tenor and vehicle in a good metaphor. The
further distance between the two stories, the more excitement generated when the link is
made. At least, that’s the theory.
Collaboration is also a subject that greatly interests me as a writer. Currently, I am
working with the photographer Charlee Brodsky, on a manuscript that blends photography and
poetry. This project, along with my work with the filmmaker Tony Buba, also reflects my
interest in the visual arts. I am very interested in exploring the different kinds of
seeing that takes place in various art forms, and I find my own work is stimulated by
gaining insight into other artists’ visions.
Music is another artistic area that I enjoy playing off of as a writer. My chapbook,
Red Vinyl, Black Vinyl, Aureole Press, 2001 (a letterpress book designed to look like
a record and fit inside a 45 record sleeve) consists entirely of poems inspired by or in
reaction to various kinds of music. One of my earliest sources of inspiration was more the
music I was listening to than the books I read, since I grew up in a working-class area of
Detroit where not much poetry was read by anyone I knew. Like many of the musicians that
came out of Detroit, I have tried at times to capture the loud, intense, chaotic noise of
the factory world in my work.
And that leads into the landscape of the political, for I have always been concerned with
class issues and inequities in our society—particularly in our large urban areas.
Formally, I have recently been working with what I call Brick Poems. Poems in all capital
letters, with the words spaced out like bricks in a wall. In addition to the visual effect
of these big heavy words, the form also creates a staccato rhythm that also reflects city
sounds.
The title of the collaboration with Charlee Brodsky is called Stone and Flesh, and
that’s where I often find myself in my poems—between those surfaces.