Jim Daniels' new collection Birth Marks receives even more praise, in a piece by Coal Hill Review, the online imprint of Autumn House Press. Regarding Daniels' writing of such urban landscapes as Detroit and Pittsburgh, reviewer Mike Walker is impressed with the poet's ability to set his own stage: "It would not, I need to stress, be a 'scene' if Daniels didn’t take it there, but he does and much to his credit: there are numerous ways of writing about places like Detroit—a city begging to have as much written of it as possible—and Daniels picked this trajectory that takes us back and forth from current-day observations over to childhood and teenage memories and back again." According to the review, Daniels knows how to transport his readers to another time and place: "Daniels' language here is downright beautiful... His power to describe in a way that really takes you to the quick and often harsh core of the matter... sparing no detail but still with a breathtaking speed that outpaces poets known for their economy is really what allows Daniels to press a short story’s portion of narrative into the slight space of two pages or less in many of these poems ... Daniels’ best poems here allow you to see every detail—even when he has left some details out... He is able to put you there, distance and time no longer a factor in the least. We don’t have enough contemporary writing on this topic, not of this quality, and not in the form of poetry, certainly ... we need more poetry of this caliber, of this intent." Click here to read the entire piece by Coal Hill Review. Birth Marks is now available at the BOA Bookstore.