Vox Populi
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Jim Daniels: Roaming the Galleries
Henry Ford II, president of Ford Motor Company, commissioned a calendar from the celebrated American illustrator Norman Rockwell to commemorate the company’s 50th anniversary in 1953.
.
No one ever stopped on Rome Street in Warren, Michigan,
to set up their easel and paint, not even on John B.
after 6 members of the Park family died in a Christmas fire,
nor on Pearl, where Carl Jacks shot his father in the face
after he’d opened the thick door to his son at 4 a.m.
thinking he’d come to reconcile. We are not big on
reconciling here. We hold grudges tight as matchsticks.
No one’s painted Ted and Helen Lipinski sitting on frayed
plastic lawn chairs on their unshaded porch, a bare square slab,
baking in the sun with after-dinner beers and smokes.
Nor Hank Landry’s greasy hands rising from under the hood
of whatever car he has up on blocks in the street.
Hank squints and smiles up to ask how your Chevy
is running and if he can borrow a few bucks till payday.
Tour buses could not make the tight turn onto Jarvis
between Bronco Lanes and Rogers Tool & Die
far from Norman Rockwell Boulevard.
The curators must have gotten lost
after one of us twisted the street signs as a joke
because we all know where we are. Nobody
paints us or speaks for us. We speak for ourselves.
Oh, we enjoy fireworks as much as anyone,
and flowers in the yard—perennials mostly.
They can change the name of the cars,
and who owns the company. They can lay us off
or fire us. When the time comes to clean up,
our hands scrub clean like everyone else’s.
We make love in the cluttered lack of silence
of the stacked box of our homes. We will wave
tentatively as you pass, but only if you wave first.
This is how we survive. How we remember each other.
Not on a wall or some well-lit nuanced stage.
We, we are perennial.
~~~
~~~~
Copyright 2024 Jim Daniels
Jim Daniels’s many collections of poetry include Gun/Shy (Wayne State, 2021) and Comment Card (Carnegie Mellon University, 2024). He was born and grew up in Detroit and now lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, the writer Kristin Kovacic.
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I just shared two of his poems in my Intro to Creative Writing class. Yes, a powerful poet.
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We make love in the cluttered lack of silence
of the stacked box of our homes. We will wave
tentatively as you pass, but only if you wave first.
This is how we survive.
Just so powerful!
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Oh yeah. Jim Daniels knows how to make a poem.
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It’s not just an American story. It’s my grandfather’s story too. And I fear it will always be thus unless the workers no longer saw off the branch on which they sit. My grandfather, in Germany, was one of the first to militate in the new Socialist Party, only just permitted to exist by Bismarck.
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Reminders of another remarkable Detroit-bred poet, Philip Levine, who also wrote of the working class life and places of that city. Daniels has a deft feel for a type of place most poets don’t know. The poem would be well served by hearing it read aloud. The narratives would stick.
One aside about this poem, (and other Vox poems, as well): I read them on my phone, and it finally dawned on me, that long lines break differently on a phone, when it’s held in the traditional up and down position we usually read from (portrait view). The line breaks, when long, go askew. After years of this, I finally turned the phone sideways, and viola, there is actually a structure of three-line stanzas (tercets) to this poem.
Phone poems add a new challenge for the reader (and possibly, the poet).
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Thanks, Jim. The connections between Daniels and Levine are spot on, and I think Daniels would agree. And yes, the phone is an odd medium for poetry.
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I, too, thought of Phil Levine reading this truly powerful and intense poem. It also speaks of my grandfather — in a steel Bravo to you, Jim Daniels!
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Ah. Just turned my phone. I usually read when I first wake up, still in bed, just before meditating. Perhaps a little groggy, but don’t think I have ever turned my phone when I read later.
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as always, Wow!
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Yes, Daniels skillfully evokes the stubborn pride of the American working class, doesn’t he?
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gre
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A powerful poem by a powerful poet.
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Agreed, Mandy!
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