please allow me to introduce: the poet chris daniels

daniels is a self-confessed high school drop out atheist anti-capitalist bay area poet and prolific translator of lusophone poetry.  i am a long time admirer of daniels since i read his blog way back in the early 2000s.  there is a lot to admire about chris daniels but what i really really love is his humility of the human being and his great love of poetry as a way of life.  of course, as daniels says, 'cleaning the toilet is more important than poetry'.  so is being a good person.  even so daniels, & i, think that a lot of life is poetry.  like cleaning the toilet.  i've not met, or corresponded, with daniels & i really don't remember when he caught my admiration.  perhaps it was from the early days of blogland.

i'm sure daniels has written tons of his own poetry.  i have his chapbook of original poems porous nomadic [airfoil, 2010] that i ordered directly from the publisher in, i can't believe eight years have flown by, 2010.  one of the great delights of reading daniels' poetry is how much he loves the poetry of others.  porous nomadic has about three pages of epigraphs of other writers' works before it moves on to daniels' own baroque poetry.

the internet never forgets.  here is an archive of daniels' early 2000s blog notes from a fellow traveller.  & here is an audio interview of daniels published at poet as radio.  & an interview with kent johnson published by the great internet journal jacket.  don't let me forget this wonderful short essay on the subject of labor published at poetic labor project.  you wanna see how good daniel's is at translating lusophone poetry?  then click here for daniels' translations of the late great brazilian poet paulo leminski.

finally, below is chris daniel's reading a poem by another favorite poet of mine, jose kozer.