Chapel of Inadvertent Joy

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.

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.

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.

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.