On The Line (review)

146 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW tearing, saw that the blood made her face a red mask. Underlying the grimness of Kathleen Wiegner's view of the world is the conviction that here, as in fairy tales, love and cruelty, loneliness and beauty co-exist, do not cancel each other out. Each moment is transformed into something special, some image or idea that catches our imaginations and makes even the cruelty bearable. Judith Roman Jim Daniels, On The Line. The Signpost Press: 412 N. State St., Bellingham, WA 98225. 24pp. $2.00. In this day and age of poetry when much of what one sees being published is dry, unemotional, and academic, it is enlightening to see a chapbook like Jim Daniels's On the Line, 1980 winner of the Signpost Press Chapbook Competition. He is a young writer from Detroit who writes honest, direct, telling poetry about the working experience. On the Line is Daniels's second chapbook of poems about working in Detroit's automobile factories. It contains seventeen lucid poems that speak small truths about the world of robotized machines and man-made sweat. The poems combine vividly as a whole to capture the mood of the factory, the uniqueness of certain memorable characters, and the feeling ofalienation and stagnation often felt by the workers. Some of the poem titles indicate that everything about factory work is fair game for Daniels to write about: "No Gloves," 'Tactory Bar," "Lunch Time in August," "Work Shoes," "Laid OffWl," "4th of July in the Factory." There are poems describing some of the workers like "Moonman" and "Pee Wee" where Daniels illuminates the essence of these few Uves in several lines of poetry. This one is entitled "The Ace of Spades": The Ace of Spades don't mess around, got that card sticking up in his hat to let you know. Cut some dude up in thejohn for ratting on him when he put a broom handle in his machine. Fixed it good. Fixed that dude the same way. Other poems Uke "Factory Education," "Muscles," and "Replacing Dave the Sweeper," give inside advice on how to survive in the monotonous world of production, numbers, and quality control. Jim Daniels's On the Line is a fine chapbook, highly recommended to anyone who wants to be introduced to a very fresh voice. His poems are straightforward and yet cutting as they continually expose the deeper, and sometimes darker, aspects of what work can do to us, and what we do to others and ourselves. Here is "After Work": On this night of blue moon and dampgrass I lay bare-backed on the ground and hum a children's song. The air is cool for this, the midnight of August. The grass pins my sticky back. You, moon, I bet you could fill my cheeks with wet snow make me forget I ever touched steel make me forget even that you look like a headlight moving toward me. David James ...