Chapel of Inadvertent Joy

by Jeffrey McDaniel

Overview

"Reading Jeffrey McDaniel's gorgeously dark and utterly compelling Chapel of Inadvertent Joy reminds me that he is probably the most important poet in America. The book in your hands was written by a master of metaphor and a poet of huge imagination and fierce ingenuity, a fine antidote to realism. Get this voice in your head."—Major Jackson

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822979128
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	10/15/2013
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	72
File size:	539 KB

About the Author

Jeffrey McDaniel is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Chapel of Inadvertent Joy. Other books include The Endarkenment, 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.

Table of Contents

Contents Little Soldier of Love Hello Track of Now A Brief History of the Future Beware of the Dark Sedan Idling Inside You Attention, Please Happy Marriage Eliot Spitzer in Grad School The Cougar Tree A Brief History of Eyebrows The Barbecued Man Pity Party The Grudge Pick-up Lines of the Marquis de Sade Conditionals Little Soldier of Love Satan Exulting Over Eve Keeper of the Light Reflections of a Cuckold and Other Blasphemies The Birds and the Bees I Am Not an Idiot The Furies The Cuckold in Autumn Life as a Donkey Holiday Weekend The Cuckold Explores the Subjunctive Reflections of a Cuckold and Other Blasphemies Lust in Translation The Cuckold and the Penal System from The Cuckold’s Survivor Manual The Cuckold Sees the Bigger Picture The Cuckold Contemplates the Malibu Fires Interview with a Cuckold Return to El Mundo Perdido A Brief History of Immortality Queen of the Shortcuts A Brief History of Neon Return to El Mundo Perdido Legacy is a piece of toilet paper hanging out of your pants at a family reunion The High Heat Kicking the Lust Bucket Youngest Brother Turning Forty Fifty-Fifty Ball Half-breed Cleaves poem beginning with a line from Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” Mapache Middle Age undocumented joyrider in the land of the flesh Reckoning Yard Work Chapel of Inadvertent Joy Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

Reading Jeffrey McDaniel’s gorgeously dark and utterly compelling Chapel of Inadvertent Joy reminds me that he is probably the most important poet in America. The book in your hands was written by a master of metaphor and a poet of huge imagination and fierce ingenuity, a fine antidote to realism. Get this voice in your head.”

—Major Jackson

“What strikes me most about Jeffrey McDaniel’s surrealist atmospherics in Chapel of Inadvertent Joy is his ability to bring us together, often ‘half-naked, with the rest of America,  / wearing only a credit card and cashmere scarf.’ Better than the vast majority of poets writing today, he can make a metaphor out of anything—the Olympic diver in the eyebrows of Kate Winslet, the fire licking the hips of the Pacific shore, and the dresses worn by teenage girls made from the skins of apples. With Dante and Tsvetaeva under his arm, he chronicles the emotions that jolt us as we stare into the abyss and pulls us away when we’ve seen enough. Funny and melancholic, Chapel of Inadvertent Joy is a deeply moving book.”

—Khaled Mattawa

“A collection of such emotionally rich, surreal-yet-real poems . . .My initial reading . . . was thirty minutes spent gorging on the excess of dark, beautiful words. But, over the next few weeks, I went back through the book more slowly, mining each poem for flashes of technique, motifs, and the tiny, bold truths that McDaniel drops among these pages like glittering jewels.”

—Coal Hill Review

“McDaniel at this best, and two traits stand out at once: the poet’s masculine big-heartedness, and his genius for carving startling metaphors and similes out of an unassuming, contemporary American idiom. . . . Though his poems may often have a formal look about them on the page, his Whitmanesque warmth and exuberant imagery engulf neat stanzas like a wave spreading its might over a staid seaside promenade; the effect is entirely magical.”

—Antioch Review

“Captivates readers with its unfailing abstract thoughts and striking language. It’s a solemn yet delightful poetry collection that flows from start to finish and challenges readers with its unique considerations. . . . a must-read.”

—Daily Nebraskan

From the Publisher