Jim Daniels’ collection bears witness to a life both mis- and well-spent: to the family, remembered and new; to the melancholy pull of drugs and casual sex; to growing up; and to the only tenable way of growing old, which is to embrace every small joy even as one laments its brevity. Indeed, Night with Drive-By Shooting Stars rages not against the dying of light but the dying fall itself—against poetic and existential complacency. “Louder, kids,” says Daniels in the beautiful “Cold Seed:” “daddy’s dying.”