Reviews for August Zero

The average rating for August Zero based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-06-22 00:00:00 Dallas Dixon I picked this up because I like Jewel's songs and hoped this short book would be transporting. But I found the language plain and not artful. For me poetry has to have a subtext and lacking that, in rare exceptions, be such a remarkable arrangement of words it's awe-inspiring. This doesn't and isn't. My favorite band (and almost certainly not yours), the Grateful Dead had two poets who wrote their lyrics; members of the band wrote the music. One writer, Robert Hunter, was a bona fide poet, supremely talented; the other, John Perry Barlowe, was a generalist, a philosopher and noted intellectual. Hunter published a beautiful large volume of his poetry/lyrics and they're rich with meaning and subtext. (But not "Casey Jones" lol). Barlowe's are too but he didn't write as much. The words of a long list of musicians including Dylan, Stevie Nicks, Kurt Cobain, Tori Amos, many rappers and :your favorite here: stand alone as powerful poetry. And there's Bernie Taupin, whose lifelong collaboration writing poetic lyrics for Elton John has resulted in many gems. Some or all of the work of these writers have depth and subtext and are subject to interpretation, able to be mined for meaning. Jewel's poems are not carefully crafted. When she took time it doesn't show; they read like she jotted them on a pad and she admits some were jotted down on a plane or in a hotel room. They read like she hasn't revisited and reshaped, in other words edited, them. They're pedestrian, often cliche, and work only on a surface level. Though sometimes she seemed to be reaching for more (e.g., in "Bukowski's Widow") for me, she never got there. I'm disappointed.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-03-30 00:00:00 Brianna Payne Jewel is my favorite singer of them all, and I recently had the chance to meet her and get my copy of this book signed. Jewel's songwriting ability, I think, is her strongest suit, so I couldn't pass up reading this. Some poetry is hard to understand because you don't know exactly where the author is coming from, so it was interesting for me to get a little more insight into Jewel's thinking. I especially enjoyed the verses about her life in Alaska. A good read for me since I'm a fan, but may not be for all.