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    In Line for the Exterminator: Poems
    In Line for the Exterminator: Poems
    In Line for the Exterminator: Poems
    Ebook118 pages51 minutes

    In Line for the Exterminator: Poems

    By Jim Daniels

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    About this ebook

    A major new collection by one of America’s foremost poets of city life and work, In Line for the Exterminator brings Jim Daniels back to his native Detroit.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWayne State University Press
    Release dateAug 14, 2007
    ISBN9780814335482
    In Line for the Exterminator: Poems
    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.

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      Book preview

      In Line for the Exterminator - Jim Daniels

      Praise for Jim Daniels:

      Daniels has the rare ability to combine clarity with sophistication. He captures, as few contemporary poets do, the sounds of North American city speech, illuminating our everyday experiences in the common tongue.

      —The Village Voice

      As with the best poetry, one can read Jim Daniels on many levels. Not to read him at all is to miss a most important and original contemporary.

      —Robert McDowell, The Hudson Review

      A lesser talent would either focus solely on the negatives of his characters’ lot or, on the other hand, romanticize their lives. Daniels takes the more difficult middle course, neither dwelling on drudgery nor idealizing his working-class heroes.

      —Jim Elledge, Booklist

      There is a melancholy sweetness running through these poems that, while not entirely redemptive, offers unexpected relief and enables us to see that Jim Daniels, despite the tough-bitten talk, is a poet born to praise.

      —Carol Muske, New York Times Book Review

      Jim Daniels has . . . become an important successor to James Wright and Phil Levine in describing men’s lives in the industrial heartland of America.

      —Julia Stein, American Book Review

      The real power of these poems lies in the straight-talking appeal of the speaker’s voice. Like a reliable engine, it powers the poems. When that voice interrupts description and intrudes directly on the narrative, the poems really soar. . . . The poems are sifting through the dark, the hard-bitten, in search of the glimmer of light that is transformative. That delivers magic.

      —Mary Gannon, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

      Daniels’ gritty style and down-on-their-luck characters recall a line from Detroit rocker Bob Seger: Beautiful loser. Never take it all, ’cause it’s easier, faster when you fall."

      —Library Journal

      Sometimes we need to read a certain kind of author because we simply have forgotten everything we knew about writing. We think we need a magic pellet, younger energy, more success, or to perform ritual—say like folding our hands and jumping off a building to get started. . . . Jim Daniels, we need you right now because we thought it was too hard to be natural while writing. . . . A real life is here. It lies behind the detail, but the detail is what we want. Jim Daniels’ poems are human on the page, growing within and beyond some divine law of poetic order, far away from writers’ disasters.

      —Grace Cavalieri, poet and producer of The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress.

      GREAT LAKES BOOKS

      A complete listing of the books in this series can be found online at wsupress.wayne.edu

      Editors

      Philip P. Mason

      Wayne State University

      Charles K. Hyde

      Wayne State University

      Advisory Editors

      Jeffrey Abt

      Wayne State University

      Sidney Bolkosky

      University of Michigan–Dearborn

      Sandra Sageser Clark

      Michigan Historical Center

      John C. Dann

      University of Michigan

      De Witt Dykes

      Oakland University

      Joe Grimm

      Detroit Free Press

      Richard H. Harms

      Calvin College

      Laurie Harris

      Pleasant Ridge, Michigan

      Susan Higman Larsen

      Detroit Institute of Arts

      Norman McRae

      Detroit, Michigan

      William H. Mulligan, Jr.

      Murray State University

      Erik C. Nordberg

      Michigan Technological University

      Gordon L. Olson

      Grand Rapids, Michigan

      Michael O. Smith

      Wayne State University

      Michael D. Stafford

      Cranbrook Institute of Science

      John Van Hecke

      Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan

      Arthur M. Woodford

      Harsen’s Island, Michigan

      In Line for the Exterminator

      POEMS

      JIM DANIELS

      Wayne State University Press Detroit

      © 2007 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Daniels, Jim, 1956–

      In line for the exterminator: poems / Jim Daniels.

      p. cm. — (Great lakes books)

      ISBN-13: 978-0-8143-3381-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

      ISBN-10: 0-8143-3381-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)

      1. Detroit (Mich.)—Poetry. I. Title.

      PS3554.A5635I5 2007

      811’.54—dc22

      2007016885

      Publication of this book was made possible through the generosity of the Ford R. Bryan Publication Fund.

      ISBN-13: 978-0-8143-3548-2 (e-book)

      CONTENTS

      In Line for the Exterminator

      I. Last Picked

      Last Picked

      Sugar, Sugar

      Balancing the Checkbook

      Open House, Science Fair Project

      Self-portrait with Cigarette

      Slaughter Ball

      Chocolate for Football

      Black Vinyl

      Cool

      FM Radio, 1971

      Looking It Up

      Detroit, 1972

      Safety

      At Dinner, My Father Informs Us He’s Been Laid Off

      Elegy for the Sheik

      Cyclone Fence,

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