Revolt of the Crash-Test Dummies: Poems by Jim Daniels

Revolt of the Crash-Test Dummies: Poems Reviews

• 
  Bjorn Sorensen

  Ahh, the vulnerability. If you've ever been a novelist or poet with writers block (or a reader with readers block), Daniels can be that author that shows you what ironic, humorous, sad and wonderful things can come out of the smallest of memories, the most quotidian of moments. For my psyche, "Revolt of the Crash Test Dummies" is an 80-page reminder that I don't need to be a struggling artist to have lots to write about and that it's possible to connect and commune with the pain and struggles of others through the windows in my house.
  
  Some of the well-known poems from start of the book - "You Bring Out the Boring White Guy In Me," "Firing the Late Person," "Capital Punishment: Lethal Injection" and "Poetry," have certainly made the rounds in swirling Portland literary event and open mic circles. I levitated toward the growing up, I'm-in-my-20s pieces in the middle of the book. One of my favorites was this one:
  
  "Efficiency, Bowling Green, OH"
  
  I lived in an ancient motel turned into efficiencies
  barely big enough for the double bed.
  Two electric burners and a sink.
  Four friends from Michigan came to visit.
  So happy to see them, I poured beer
  over their heads, up their sleeves. They in turn
  did not hurt me. I'd started smoking again.
  I blamed the whole state of Ohio. In that small town
  you could walk everywhere and nowhere
  and in between. Three bars-two with the word
  "Dead" in their names. The wind smacked us upside
  our drunken little heads. One friend, a woman,
  shared the bed with Marc. The rest of us lay
  on indoor-outdoor carpet in a U-shape around them.
  We listened to each other breath in that stinky room....
  ....I slept at the foot of the bed
  and was almost never happier. Four friends.
  If I was a dog, I'd have licked their feet.
  The U can be a beautiful letter, softly catching
  falling things... My friends convinced me to use
  my porch light for its radiant yellow,
  its optimistic glow. In case somebody might
  come home, even if it was only me.
  
  
  The pendulum swings so quickly between happy and sad moments, it adds depth to both extremes. A lot of dark stories try to redeem them selves with somewhat of a happy ending. Some of these poems do the opposite, connecting you to what's more actual in everyday life.
  
  Daniels can be humble and edgy at the same time and never writes poetry that can lose its authenticity through poetic niceties or grandiose metaphor. There's a ton of skill here. Just nothing that closes the door to what's real and right in front.
• 
  Sarah

  There is a Japanese word for a fifth “taste” in addition to salty, sweet, bitter, and sour. The closest English translation of umami is akin to “savory deliciousness.” What makes umami unique, besides being a fifth and distinct taste from the basic four, is that it seems to provoke a response of preference from the human brain. I mention this because it is the closest concept in any language that I can come up with to describe the feeling I get when reading poetry by Jim Daniels, like when I get to a poem in Revolt of the Crash-Test Dummies innocently titled “Sledding in America” and am left with the notion that “You need a way to steer,/or all the room in the world.” Umami.
  Revolt of the Crash-Test Dummies grabs the reader by the windpipe and doesn’t let go. In a good way. This is especially arresting when the poems deal with family relationships, as in “Waiting Room, Children’s Hospital, Pittsburgh,” when the son asks what an esophagus is and the following reflection and response: “They’ll stick/ a tiny camera on a tube up his nose,/ down his throat. Ask the doctor.”
  Much of Daniels latest collection of poetry is depressing—there is no way to sugarcoat it. Just as Daniels doesn’t sugarcoat reality for the reader. However, the depression invoked by this collection is not one that lies down and gives up. It is one that, by its very acknowledgement of truth, stands up, confronts, incites. Daniels is also able to inject a note of his brand of ironic humor throughout, as with his play with language and poetry itself in “Poetry.” At times in your face, other times heart-breaking in its subtlety, Revolt of the Crash-Test Dummies shows Daniels’ poetic genius when the reader is along for the whole ride, with the poet past the point of crashing.
  Daniels consistently leaves the reader with an image, an action, a scene that contains all the feeling that would be sappy to say. The three lines before the last of “¿” then, “…So, that day on the bridge,/ you should have suspected//the way she stood still, braced herself,” carries more weight than a telling that I could discount. I cannot discount anything that is left with me after reading Revolt of the Crash Test Dummies. The poem “Hung Out to Dry” asks “While we take our snapshots,/ who will notice the lone swimmer/ stroking perfectly over the falls?” Daniels sees what those who are merely voyeuristic miss. This is a necessary book, and Jim Daniels remains my preference for the chronicler of our lives.