Endarkenment

Jeffrey McDaniel is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Chapel of Inadvertent Joy. Other books include TheEndarkenment, The Splinter Factory, The Forgiveness Parade, and Alibi School. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, he teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in the Hudson Valley.

Even if you count yourself among the unredeemed who claim they don't like poetry, buy this book anyway. It will convert you and install a skylight in your brain. Alive and kicking in these pages is the voice of a brilliantly comic consciousness. McDaniel is a candid, frisky survivor: hyperalert, conversant with drugs and sobriety, obscene phone call addicts, 'boner etiquette,' fatherhood, the special hell of family, being an 'emotional warrior' and so much more. He's an urban wordsmith of the first order. You hold in your hands his anguished autobiography, a smorgasbord of famished compassion, tenderness, luminous surprises, and armor-piercing humor.