Night with Drive-By Shooting Stars

Jim Daniels' "Night with Drive-By Shooting Stars" is grounded in place and family and marriage. It resounds with the echoes of people reaching out to one another--sometimes successfully, often not. As in his other poetry volumes, both Michigan and Pennsylvania are key characters (Daniels was reared outside Detroit, and has lived in Pittsburgh for two decades). One of the very first poems has to do with his ambivalence about the idea of his parents leaving the home he grew up in:"Stay, I say. I keep a few boxesin the basement--old records,magazines, books. A little weightto hold them there so I can imaginesome constant thing.""Strip" is an astonishing poem. Daniels limns the awkward pas-de-deux of two people who scarcely know each other, but are both seeking physical intimacy. The fact that they are mostly strangers is captured perfectly at the end of the poem:" . . . She whisperedin my ear, and I pulled the blanketsup over us. I knew her name,so I whispered that."When he moves on to marriage and family, Daniels does equally well--the images are pungent, stark in their simplicity, resonant with truth. The poems he writes for and about his two children are especially good--true, loving, but dispassionate in observed detail. This is a fine work of a mature and skilled American poet.