Revolt of the Crash-Test Dummies

Jim Daniels

A native of Detroit, Jim Daniels now lives in Pittsburgh. He is the Thomas Stockham Baker Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, where he teaches in the creative writing program. The recipient of numerous awards, including the Brittingham Prize for Poetry, Jim Daniels has published three volumes of short fiction and nine collections of poems, among them Show and Tell: New and Selected Poems (2003), which was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. He has also written the screenplays for two independent feature films, No Pets (1994) and Dumpster (2005), and is the author of a one-act play, Heart of Hearts, which was produced at New York's 13th Street Repertory Theater in 1998. His poems have appeared widely and have been featured in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies.

Reviews

Daniels can turn a poem in unexpected directions. He has an ear for real American phrasing—nothing pumped up, inflated, "Poetic" with a capital "P." Revolt of the Crash-Test Dummies is the real stuff: honest, very well made, engaging, and loaded with irony and humor.

—Christopher Buckley, final judge for the 2006 Blue Lynx Prize

Show and Tell is a splendidly varied, rich and complex collection of poems, serious and wise, wry and often profound. Daniels's work has become both more experientially dramatic and more poetically sure of itself. The voice in the poems retains its directness, its deceptive artlessness, but the conscience of the work and the generosity which informed it from the beginning have grown still more substantial.

—C.K. Williams

These are tender, moving, and nostalgic poems about an American life, beautifully wrought and vividly close to the experience of all of us born in small towns—close to parents and siblings we loved, providing a foundation for a decent, mature life on which love and faith are founded. Reading these poems will make you feel better about who you are and where you are.

—Carolyn Kizer, on Blessing the House

Ordering Information

To purchase Revolt of the Crash-Test Dummies by Jim Daniels, please contact our distributor, University Press of New England toll free at 1-800-421-1561 or by fax at 1-603-448-9729. The book is also available online at UPNE, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other fine retailers.

To request a copy for review, please contact the Carnegie Mellon University Press Editorial Offices at (412) 268-2861 or by email at CarnegieMellonUniversityPress@gmail.com.