Jim Daniels - Life and Work

Life and Work

Daniels' writing style is as this:
Fine dust in the summer field of childhood
and the dark dank basement of lust
unfinished and forgotten feuds
vile taunts and sing-song slurs.
The tainted gentle stench of weeds
the absence of stately trees, adult supervision
the wide flat factories
the chemical tar of their parking lots.
The bicycles and t-shirts and greasy rags
and the foreign tenderness of girls
we shied away from, then dreamt about.

Since 1981, Daniels has been on the faculty of the creative writing program at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he is the Thomas Stockham Baker Professor of English.

The majority of Daniels' papers can be found within the Special Collections department of Michigan State University's main library.

Daniels' literary works have been recognized and highlighted at Michigan State University in their Michigan Writers Series. He won the inaugural Brittingham Prize in Poetry in 1985 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was educated at Alma College and Bowling Green State University.