Blue Jesus. Jim Daniels. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-88748-332-1

Blue Jesus is a strange and fascinating book, completely different than Jim Daniels' earlier writings. Daniels' first three full-length collections of poems -- Places/Everyone, Punching Out, and M-80 -- are set in the Detroit auto factory where he worked as a young man as well as in the working class neighborhood where he grew up. These realistic, gritty, and sometimes violent poems were praised for their tough spare style and their unsentimental portrayal of working people's lives. Daniels' fourth collection of poems Blessing the House and his collection of short stories No Pets polished his lean realistic style, though they lack the tight-lipped anger that gave the earlier books an uncompromising edge. It would have been easy for Daniels to continue writing realistic autobiographical poems and stories -- he handles the genre well, and he has developed a small but dedicated following. Instead, with Blue Jesus he has departed in a radical and, some might say, risky direction. Daniels' new collection is divided into three coherent sections. The book begins with a sequence of nine poems that metaphorically describe varieties of religious experience. Yellow Jesus opens:

Can you keep a secret?
I have seen haloes around the heads
of beautiful women. Okay, shoot me
with a well-intentioned folk song --
I'm telling the truth
till it hurts: I love the body.

The poem Red Jesus has an angry violent tone. Green Jesus describes the exuberant messiness of nature. Blue Jesus, the title poem of the collection, implores us to trust mirages and shadows. Each color is linked to a mood, creating a surrealistic montage of religious feeling.

The second section consists of sketches of characters in spiritual crises. A man turns himself in to the police, though his crimes have been committed only against God and his own soul. Another man, perhaps the poet himself, watches his small children while thinking of angels and his own lack of faith. In Children of the Damned, the poet remembers the Ryan theater where he and his friends screamed in the dark while watching horror movies. This long poem argues that watching the movies is an intensely spiritual experience, one that shapes our consciousness far more than praying in church:

We take what shrines the world gives us ...
Here where the screen unzips itself
and desire steps out,
naked, bright, and beautiful.

The third section of the book is a sequence of poems written in response to the paintings of Francis Bacon. Here Daniels lets loose with frightening imagery and odd voices:

It so dark WHO KNOWS
what goin on in here
mano mano man

heh heh
and GUESS WHO
got da flashlight?

The book closes with Jet of Water, a lyric so beautifully simple that it seems that the whole spiritual struggle of the book has been leading up to this one song:

lit by evening and fragile sin
(lit by the one forgiving eye)
and if we wade in the pool
(and if we wade in the pool)
will we receive a saving grace
(will we give a saving grace)

oh Lord when I die
(when I die)
leave the water running

Daniels' new book risks disappointing fans who love his edgy portrayals of working class life, and these new poems may be offensive to the conventionally religious. But Daniels is to be commended for stretching his limits, taking long strides in a direction few writers dare to go.