The American Midwest has produced some of the most popular and successful poets in recent American history.
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) was of Chicago and elsewhere until, late in life, he relocated here (“just five miles from wherever I am” to quote John Prine). He won three Pulitzers and one Nobel Prize. Not bad for a man who never finished any school past the eighth grade.
Shel Silverstein (1930-1999) was also a Chicago man and worked his way to fame and fortune as a poet, cartoonist, songwriter, and playwright. Much of which has been translated into 30 languages. Who can forget The Giving Tree or A Boy Named Sue?
Bob Dylan (1941- ) started out in Minnesota and has ended up in Southern California. Along the way, he became the most successful American author, poet, composer, songwriter, and performer that any of us can name (with his own Nobel and a bulging bank account).
All three were upper Midwestern men with life experiences connecting them firmly to the working class of the American people. Add this characteristic to their talent for writing lyrics and singing songs, and you realize how natural it is to place the late John Prine (1946-2020) in their august and influential company.
Yes, Prine had a bit more country in his soul and naturally relocated to Nashville. Like Sandburg and Dylan, he played the guitar and sang. His ability with the instrument was limited, however, as was his voice; but few if any can surpass him in penning memorable lines.
John Prine was a poet, and it is his poetry—his song lyrics—that has so fascinated me.
After his dad died sitting on their front porch on a hot August afternoon, Prine wrote a song about it, full of pathos and mysteriously entitled “My Mexican Home.” Here is the chorus:
Mama dear, your boy is here far across the sea
Waiting for that sacred core that burns inside of me.
And I feel a storm all wet and warm not ten miles away
Approaching my Mexican home.
Another tender song of love takes a familiar phrase (“Can I Go All the Way with You?”) and fills it with meaning infinitely deeper and wider.
You have your way, you have your doubts: the falling in, the falling out.
A bridge is built; a bridge is burned ‘till you reach the point of no return.
Don’t know where we’re coming from or where we’re going to–
Can I go all the way with you?
In another splendid song about love, entitled “You Got Gold,” he has this line, so terribly true for artists of all kinds, including preachers:
It gives me an ocean of mixed-up emotion. I’ll have to work it out in a song.
Or a sketch. Or a dance. Or even a sermon!!
Speaking of sermons, which he rarely if ever does, Prine gave free rein to his religious imagination, much of it making for quiet hilarity:
On a dusty pew in a vestibule sits the devil playing pocket pool.
He’s waiting for the next poor fool who forgot that it was Sunday.
Another pool-hall-ish situation blended a bit of the devil with a healthy dose of Jesus. It is called “Spanish Pipedream” (and once again, who knows why!). A solider on his way to Montreal has a close encounter with a topless dancer, which elicited this stunningly funny but freakishly original line: I knew that topless dancer had something up her sleeve.
And when he came to the chorus, Prine penned these memorable lines, placed as life coaching by the woman of ill repute:
Blow up your TV. Throw away your paper.
Go to the country. Build you a home.
Plant a little garden. Eat a lot of peaches.
Try and find Jesus on your own.
Much of Prine’s poetry offers insight into the grittiness of life, like this winsome line from one of his better-known songs, “Souvenirs:”
Broken hearts and dirty windows make life difficult to see.
That’s why last night and this morning always look the same to me.
A longer and genuinely humorous observation about life comes from his song, “That’s the Way the World Goes Round.”
I was sitting in the bathtub, counting my toes
When the radiator broke, water all froze.
I got stuck in the ice without my clothes,
Naked as the eyes of a clown.
I was crying, “Ice cubes” hoping I’d croak,
When the sun come through the window, the ice all broke.
I stood up and laughed, thought it was a joke.
That’s the way that the world goes ’round.
Finally, and supremely, there is that one line that made him famous, and justly so. It was written when still a young man, in the song about war and drugs. “Sam Stone.” It appeared on his very first album, in 1970, and has been performed for audiences all over the world. It, alone, could make a man famous … and rich!
There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes.
As the father of a recovering addict, this song always makes me stop and stare into whatever empty space is close by. And when I hear the subsequent line, Sam Stone was alone when he popped his last balloon, climbing the walls while sitting in his chair, I want to cry.
But what I do is pray.
And when I pray, I give thanks for John Prine, the poet.
For other columns about John Prine, see HERE
(October 2021)
