Reviewed by: The Book of Daniel by Aaron Smith Savannah Sipple (bio) Aaron Smith. The Book of Daniel. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019. 108 pages. Softcover. $17.00. Aaron Smith. The Book of Daniel. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019. 108 pages. Softcover. $17.00. To some readers, Aaron Smith's newest poetry collection The Book of Daniel might read like an homage to pop culture, poetry, and gay icons, but these poems ache with lust, anger, desire, grief, and sex, and they offer no apologies for not being able to reconcile the ways those things coexist. Smith writes about our culture's fascination with celebrity by weaving together names familiar in both pop culture and the literary world. In the poem "Celebrity," he says: [End Page 119] Anne Sexton died in 1974, the year I was born.Thomas James died in 1974 and was bornin Joliet, Illinois, where I was born. He wroteLetters to a Stranger before he killed himself.I've written three books few people readand wanted to kill myself. [and later] ….I wentto the building in SoHo where Heath Ledger died.Flowers on the sidewalk, body bag dragged outunder camera flash. I tried to explain to engineersI worked for why his death was a big deal, but they werehomophobic and incapable of nonlinear thinking. Literary and cultural icons carry the same significance for Smith, and this poem sets the tone for the entire collection. First, it captures the way we often try to make personal connections with those we idolize. We could be them: Todd Haynes took a blade to Barbie'sface to make it look like Karen Carpenter lost weight.Basquiat and Winehouse were 27, too. If the elevator triesto bring you down. If pills plus alcohol plus fame, thenthe answer must be River Phoenix. Go crazy. The rest of the collection holds nothing back in the way it tackles complexities of being gay, having a deeply religious upbringing, and fighting to simply exist. It's hard to choose whether Smith's honesty is the sharpest in regard to grief or desire. The title poem of the collection "The Book of Daniel" is not, in fact, a retelling of the Biblical [End Page 120] lion's den, but is a litany of desire about Daniel Craig. It uses the modus operandi of a serial killer to capture his obsession: I fell in love with Daniel Craigwhen he was stalked by a man in Enduring Love—before he was Bond-hot and too famous. I fantasize howI could kidnap the guy from the gym whose nipplesslip out of his Red Sox tank top. He acts like it's okayto love his body. I could use chloroform or a gunto take him. I'm not sure what to do after that,but I eat hard candy in bed and imagine it. We associate serial killers with violence because if we associate them with desire, then don't we all have the potential to cross that line? And where does the line begin: with a scrapbook, a journal, a lock of hair? Does it start with a stare at the gym, a sweet in the mouth? In all of this winding of desire and obsession and violence, Smith drops a subtle line in "He acts like it's okay / to love his body," and there the duality deepens. Which does the speaker desire more: the guy from the gym or his confidence? Do we want to be celebrities, or do we want to be with them? We hold multitudes of beings within ourselves and this is what makes our relationships complex and sometimes painful, particularly for queer folks whose parents tell us to "get AIDS and die," as noted in Smith's "The Dancing Lesbian." It feels like the mother-son relationship has moved past this painful moment, but it captures the ways in which contrasting emotions can exist at once. Because of this, it seems fitting that interspersed with desire, The Book of Daniel also captures the grief of a parent's cancer diagnosis; the presence of one emotion...