Gun/Shy (Made in Michigan Writers Series)

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Synopsis
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.
Copyright:
2021

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
96 Pages
ISBN-13:
9780814348796
Publisher:
Wayne State University Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Jim Daniels
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Poetry, Literature and Fiction, Social Studies
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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