Jim Daniels: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

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Obedience School

 

Near the end, the experts on loss

sold us a robot dog that barked

and leaned into the touch

 

to give comfort to my blind dying

mother. She wasn’t fooled enough

to name it—or gone enough,

 

though she was pretty gone

then. We put it in her hands

and she stroked it

 

then hurled it across the room.

Nothing to lose is never true.

Always something more to lose.

 

I turned the dog off.

Bad dog, I said.

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Jim Daniels’ most recent collection of poems is Gun/Shy, Wayne State University Press. He has published many collections of fiction; written four produced screenplays; and his collection of essays, An Ignorance of Trees, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in 2025. He has edited or co-edited six anthologies, most recently RESPECT: The Poetry of Detroit Music. He is a recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and two from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. A native of Detroit, he lives in Pittsburgh and currently teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA Program.

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                                                      Paul Strand, Blind Woman, photogravure, 1912, The J. Paul Getty Museum

Comments

[Matthew Rohrer]

damn. The ending. Wow.

[Peter Bushyeager]

Great poem!

[Grace Cavalieri]

I love this guy, this truth teller and always have.

[Richard Garcia]

Interesting how a two word ending can make the whole poem reverberate. Very cool.

[Sr. Leslie]

Excellent poem! “Nothing to lose is never true./Always something more to lose.”…wise man Jim and thank you…and thank you Terence!

[JZ]

Beautiful poem, Jim—punchy, not a word out of place!

[Terence Winch]

Thanks for the comment, Leslie.

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

Jim McDaniels' brilliant lines

"Nothing to lose is never true.
Always something more to lose."

oddly reminded me of these four lines--especially the last two--from Richard Thompson's song "Beeswing":

"And they say her flower is faded now
Hard weather and hard booze
But maybe that's just the price you pay
For the chains you refuse"

Each quote is impressively incisive, painfully true, and wholly unforgettable. I now add "Obedience School" to my quiver of "the right words in the right place at the right time."

Bravo, Jim!

[Eileen Reich]

Wonderful poem.

[Don Berger]

At first I thought this poem was purely mythological, refreshingly so, only to be thrilled to find out in line 5 that it's actually historical narrative--this really happened! There really was such a dog! And what a story he's at the center of! This poem operates in new territory (new to me at least), beautifully illustrating a situation I've never experienced through literature before. All this to say it's a brilliant poem, with fantastic coverage of an event that thrills us and sticks with us when we're done reading. Thank you for your artful ways, Jim, and thank you Terence for once again sending treasure our way.

[Thomas Devaney]

Read it three times and will read it again. Thank you JD.

[Frank Lehner]

Like a riveter binding beams is Jim’s soft exquisite touch.done with the gloves off.

[Paul Tulloch]

Hi Jim- I recall reading many poems and having personal interpretations- but this one truly connects on some very surreal levels. First off I spent 9 months getting my Sheltie Sully trained to become a therapy dog. We go to the elder home once a week to visit residents. One of my fears is having one of the residents do something like throwing Sully across the room or kicking him. Thankfully he has such a long and fluffy beard I am sure he would far surpass the robot dog in his ability to calm. Although they do have a robot cat in the unit and Sully met up with it last week. It did not go well- Sully barked at it and growled. Not what you want from your therapy dog! I also have a mom up in Sault Ste Marie in an elder home with mid to late stage dementia. It is such an awful disease and the hardship of leaving her there is so emotionally filled with feelings that are hard to put words to. But you robot dog poem definitely got to that frustrations and angst. Many thanks for helping get all those workplace poems published a few years back- will always be grateful. I am working at Stanford on a AI climate change project these days. So far away from work poetry but I still make some poet notes!

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

Loved the very last two bitter-sweet, ironic lines: "Bad dog/I turned it off." There are always more stupid mistakes to regret.

[David Beaudouin]

Wonderful poem--love the laconic diction and Jim's finding the deeper complexities in the simplest acts, as the best poems do. Rage, rage against the robot dogs indeed--I'm going to go and kick a Roomba now. Thanks, Jim and Terence!

[Terence Winch]

Thanks for the comment, mon ami.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks for the comment, David.

[David Lehman]

Jim Daniels is a very good and, alas, very underrated poet. Here's a poem that will teach something to any "expert on loss." I always drink Jack Daniel's when I read Jim Daniels.

[Jack Ridl]

Hard to fathom the amount of consistently terrific, important, meaningful work Jim has given to all of us. We are all ever grateful.

[clarinda harriss]

What Tom Devaney said.
I think the dying mother is really quite triumphant in what she did. Asthe great singer said at the end of his album OLD DIRT FARMER, "I ain't dead YET."
Yes to the mother. Yes to the poem and poet!
clarinda