Reviews of Night with Drive-By Shooting Stars
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Jim Daniels’ latest collection bears witness to a life both mis- and well-spent: to the family, remembered and new; to the melancholy pull of drugs and casual sex; to growing up; and to the only tenable way of growing old, which is to embrace every small joy even as one laments its brevity. Indeed, Night with Drive-By Shooting Stars rages not against the dying of light but the dying fall itself—against poetic and existential complacency. “Louder, kids,” says Daniels in the beautiful “Cold Seed:” “daddy’s dying.”

Praise for Places, Everyone
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“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

Praise for Punching Out
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“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

Praise for M-80
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“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