Poetry Magazine, Joni Mitchell, June-July 2000

Joni Mitchell

CANADA

Painting With Words and Music

“Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music” - Ezra Pound

oetry and music share an common ancestry. For instance, Sappho, it is written, sang her poetry while accompanying herself on the lyre. Much of the poetry composed during the Middle Ages was written specifically to be sung. Such poets as Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth, and William Blake employed the ballad stanza form. In fact, the word “lyric” refers to a typically lucid and simple or direct category of poetry, often representational of music in its sound patterns.

Though Joni Mitchell may appear, at first glance, a curious (if not unorthodox) “classic poet,” many of her lyrics transcend the banality of popular music, reaching a poetic depth ripe with keen observation, and bold imagery. Mitchell credits her love of words to both her mother, Myrtle Anderson, who recited Shakespeare to Mitchell as she was growing up, and to a seventh grade teacher, Mr. Kratzman, who, upon learning of the young Mitchell’s love for painting, told her, “if you can paint with a brush then you can paint with words.”

A poet, painter, musician, and songwriter, Mitchell is a preeminent Renaissance woman, influencing an entire generation of songwriters. Mitchell has devoted much of her artistic life to chronicling the emotional ebbs and flows of the human heart. Her lyrics have been compared to the poems of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.

But it is a comparison at which she bristles. "I don’t like a lot of poets, and that seems to annoy people, that I’m dismissive of a lot of what they think of as great poetry,” she said, in a 1997 interview with Stephen Holden. “I’m with Nietzsche on the poets: ‘The poet is the vainest of the vain, even before the ugliest of water buffalo does he fan his tail. I’ve looked among them for an honest man and all I’ve dredged up are old gods’ heads. He muddies his waters that he might appear deep.’"

What always bugged me about poetry in school was the artifice of it. When Dylan wrote, 'You've got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend,' as an opening line, the language was direct and undeniable. I love Yeats. As for Plath and Sexton, I'm sorry, but I smell a rat. There was a lot of guile in the work, a lot of posturing. It didn't really get down to the nitty-gritty of the human condition. And there was the suicide-chic aspect."

Born Roberta Joan Anderson, in 1943, in Alberta, Canada, , Mitchell grew up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. In 1963, she entered art school in Calgary. There, she taught herself to play ukulele and played regularly in Calgary’s coffeehouses, earning a reputation as a strikingly inventive songwriter.

By 1964, unwed and pregnant, Mitchell dropped out of art school. Concealing her condition from her parents, Mitchell moved to Toronto. Because she was "penniless and unemployed," Mitchell gave up her daughter to an adoption agency. Mitchell then met and married fellow musician, Chuck Mitchell.

After her marriage to Chuck Mitchell disintegrated, Mitchell moved to Greenwich Village and began playing regularly in the coffeehouses and clubs around Bleeker Street. Soon, celebrated folk singers, such as Tom Rush and Judy Collins, began recording Mitchell’s songs. By 1968, Mitchell had released her debut album, “Joni Mitchell/Song To A Seagull.”

A prolific and restless artist, Mitchell produced more albums, including “Clouds” (1969), “Ladies Of The Canyon” (1970), “Blue” (1971), and “For The Roses” (1972). By the time she released her sixth album, “Court And Spark,” in 1974, Mitchell found herself at the forefront of the confessional singer- songwriter-movement. “Court and Spark” was heralded by critics as a near miraculous synthesis of folk, rock, and jazz idioms. Rolling Stone Magazine crowned her the “Queen of Rock.”

But it was a crown she would only briefly wear. As she began exploring jazz and world music on subsequent albums, such as “The Hissing Of Summer Lawns” (1975), “Hejira” (1976), and “Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter” (1977), Mitchell’s popularity waned. In 1978, legendary jazz composer Charles Mingus, who was dying from Lou Gehrig’s disease, asked Mitchell to write lyrics for Six compositions he had written.

Critics universally slammed the resulting album, “Mingus,” released in 1979, six months after Mingus’ death. “I was warned by management that it (“Mingus”) would cost me and it did. The musicianship on that album is at a very high level,” Mitchell said, “but it hammered the nail into my coffin. It was viewed as an act of heresy by the rock and roll community, as an act of exploitation by the jazz community… it took many years to build back from that.”

In the ensuing years, Mitchell released several albums, including “Wild Things Run Fast” (1982), “Dog Eat Dog” (1985), “Chalk Mark In A Rainstorm” (1988) and “Night Ride Home” (1991). Recently, Mitchell has received several prestigious awards, including two Grammy Awards for her 1994 album, “Turbulent Indigo,” Billboard’s “Lifetime Achievement Award,” and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1996, she received the distinguished Polar Music Prize, in Stockholm.

Though she is best known for such compositions as “Both Sides, Now,” “Chelsea Morning,” “The Circle Game,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” and “Woodstock,” Mitchell’s more obscure work is often her most hypnotic:
~ Will Elliott, Associate Editor

NATHAN LA FRANEER

I hired a coach to take me from confusion to the plane
And though we shared a common space I know we'll never meet again
The driver with his eyebrows furrowed in the rear-view mirror
I read his name and it was plainly written Nathan La Franeer
I asked him would he hurry But we crawled the canyons slowly
Through the buyers and the sellers
Through the burglar bells and the wishing wells
With gangs and girly shows,
The ghostly garden grows

The cars and buses bustled through the bedlam of the day
I looked through window-glass at streets and Nathan grumbled at the gray
I saw an aging cripple selling Superman balloons
The city grated through chrome-plate
The clock struck slowly half-past-noon
Through the tunnel tiled and turning
Into daylight once again I am escaping
Once again goodbye
To symphonies and dirty trees
With parks and plastic clothes,
The ghostly garden grows

He asked me for a dollar more
He cursed me to my face
He hated everyone who paid to ride And share his common space
I picked my bags up from the curb And stumbled to the door
Another man reached out his hand
Another hand reached out for more
And I filled it full of silver
And I left the fingers counting
And the sky goes on forever
Without meter maids and peace parades
You feed it all your woes,
The ghostly garden grows

from the album, “Joni Mitchell/Song To A Seagull,”
Copyright © 1968; Siquomb Publishing Company

TIN ANGEL

Varnished weeds in window jars
Tarnished beads on tapestries
Kept in satin boxes are
Reflections of love's memories

Letters from across the seas
Roses dipped in sealing wax
Valentines and maple leaves
Tucked into a paperback
Guess I'll throw them all away,
I found someone to love today

Dark with darker moods is he
Not a golden Prince who's come
Through columbines and wizardry
To talk of castles in the sun
Still I'll take a chance and see,
I found someone to love today

There's a sorrow in his eyes
Like the angel made of tin
What will happen if I try
To place another heart in him
In a Bleeker Street cafe,
I found someone to love today
I found someone to love today

from the album, Clouds,”
Copyright © 1969; Siquomb Publishing Company

BANQUET

Come to the dinner gong
The table is laden high
Fat bellies and hungry little ones
Tuck your napkins in
And take your share
Some get the gravy
And some get the gristle
Some get the marrow bone
And some get nothing,
Though there's plenty to spare

I took my share down by the sea
Paper plates and bottles on the tide
Seagulls come down and they squawk at me
Down where the water skiers glide
Some turn to Jesus
And some turn to heroin
Some turn to rambling around
Looking for a clean sky
And a drinking stream
Some watch the paint peel off
Some watch their kids grow up
Some watch their stocks and bonds
Waiting for that big deal: American Dream.

I took my dream down by the sea
Yankee yachts and lobster pots and sunshine
And logs and sails And Shell Oil pails
Dogs and tugs and summertime
Back in the banquet line Angry young people crying
Who let the greedy in
And who left the needy out
Who made this salty soup
Tell him we're very hungry now
For a sweeter fare

In the cookie I read
"Some get the gravy
And some get the gristle
Some get the marrow bone
And some get nothing
Though there's plenty to spare"

FOR THE ROSES

I heard it in the wind last night
It sounded like applause
Did you get a round resounding for you
Way up here
It seems like many dim years ago
Since I heard that face to face
Or seen you face to face
Though tonight I can feel you here
I get these notes
On butterflies and lilac sprays
From girls who just have to tell me
They saw you somewhere
In some office sits a poet
And he trembles as he sings
And he asks some guy
To circulate his soul around
On your mark red ribbon runner
The caressing rev of motors
Finely tuned like fancy women
In thirties evening gowns
Up the charts
Off to the airport
Your name's in the news
Everything's first class
The lights go down
And it's just you up there
Getting them to feel like that

Remember the days when you used to sit
And make up your tunes for love
And pour your simple sorrow
To the soundhole and your knee
And now you're seen
On giant screens
And at parties for the press
And for people who have slices of you
From the company
They toss around your latest golden egg
Speculation well who's to know
If the next one in the nest
Will glitter for them so?

I guess I seem ungrateful
With my teeth sunk in the hand
That brings me things I really can't give up just yet
Now I sit up here the critic
And they introduce some band
But they seem so much confetti
Looking at them on my TV set
Oh the power and the glory
Just when you're getting a taste for worship
They start bringing out the hammers
And the boards And the nails...

I heard it in the wind last night
It sounded like applause
Chilly now
End of summer
No more shiny hot nights
It was just the arbutus rustling
And the bumping of the logs
And the moon swept down black water
Like an empty spotlight

THE JUNGLE LINE

Rousseau walks on trumpet paths
Safaris to the heart of all that jazz
Through I-bars and girders through wires and pipes
The mathematic circuits of the modern nights
Through huts, through Harlem, through jails, and gospel pews
Through the class on Park, and the trash on Vine
Through Europe and the deep, deep heart of Dixie blue
Through savage progress cuts the jungle line

In a low-cut blouse she brings the beer
Rousseau paints a jungle flower behind her ear
Those cannibals of shuck and jive
They'll eat a working girl like her alive
With his hard-edged eye and his steady hand
He paints the cellar full of ferns and orchid vines
And he hangs a moon above a five-piece band
He hangs it up above the jungle line

The jungle line, the jungle line
Screaming in a ritual of sound and time
Floating, drifting on the air conditioned wind
And drooling for a taste of something smuggled in
Pretty women funneled through valves and smoke
Coy and bitchy, wild and fine
And charging elephants and chanting slaving boats
Charging, chanting down the jungle line

There's a poppy wreath on a soldier's tomb
There's a poppy snake in a dressing room
Poppy poison, poppy tourniquet
It slithers away on brass like mouthpiece spit
And metal skin and ivory birds
Go steaming up to Rousseau's vines
They go steaming up to Brooklyn Bridge
Steaming, steaming, steaming up the jungle line

SWEET BIRD

Out on some borderline
Some mark of in-between
I lay down, golden in time
And woke up vanishing
Sweet bird you are
Briefer than a falling star
All these vain promises on beauty jars
Somewhere with your wings on time You must be laughing

Behind our eyes
Calendars of our lives
Circled with compromise
Sweet bird of time and change
You must be laughing
Up on your feathers laughing

Golden in time
Cities under the sand
Power ideals and beauty
Fading in everyone's hand
Give me some time
I feel like I'm losing mine
Out here on this horizon line
With the earth spinning
And the sky forever rushing

No one knows
They can never get that close
Guesses at most
Guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching
Guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching
Guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching

SHADOW AND LIGHT

Every picture has its shadows
And it has some source of light
Blindness, blindness and sight
The perils of benefactors
The blessings of parasites
Blindness, blindness and sight
Threatened by all things
Devil of cruelty
Drawn to all things
Devil of delight
Mythical devil of the ever-present laws
Governing blindness, blindness and sight

Suntans in reservation dining rooms
Pale miners in their lantern rays
Night, night and day
Hostage smiles on presidents
Freedom scribbled in the subway
It's like night, night and day
Threatened by all things
God of cruelty
Drawn to all things
God of delight
Mythical god of the everlasting laws
Governing day, day and night

Critics of all expression
Judges in black and white
Saying it's wrong, saying it's right
Compelled by prescribed standards
Or some ideals we fight
For wrong, wrong and right
Threatened by all things
Man of cruelty-mark of Cain
Drawn to all things
Man of delight-born again, born again
Man of the laws, the ever-broken laws
Governing wrong, wrong and right
Governing wrong, wrong and right
Wrong and right.

AMELIA

I was driving across the burning desert
When I spotted six jet planes
Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain
It was the hexagram of the heavens it was the strings of my guitar
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

The drone of flying engines
Is a song so wild and blue
It scrambles time and seasons if it gets thru to you
Then your life becomes a travelogue
Of picture post card charms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Other's just come to harm
Oh, Amelia, it was just a false alarm

I wish that he was here tonight
It's so hard to obey
His sad request of me to kindly stay away
So this is how I hide the hurt
As the road leads cursed and charmed
I tell Amelia, it was just a false alarm

A ghost of aviation
She was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea like me she had a dream to fly
Like Icarus ascending
On beautiful foolish arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

Maybe I've never really loved
I guess that is the truth
I've spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitudes
And looking down on everything
I crashed into his arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel
To shower off the dust
And I slept on the strange pillows of my wanderlust
I dreamed of 747s
Over geometric farms
Dreams, Amelia, - dreams and false alarms

FURRY SINGS THE BLUES

Old Beale Street is coming down
Sweeties' Snack Bar boarded up now
And Egles the Tailor and the Shine Boy's gone
Faded out with ragtime blues
Handy's cast in bronze
And he's standing in a little park
With a trumpet in his hand
Like he's listening back to the good old bands
And the click of high heeled shoes
Old Furry sings the blues

Propped up in his bed
With his dentures and his leg removed
And Ginny's there
For her kindness and Furry's beer
She's the old man's angel overseer

Pawn shops glitter like gold tooth caps
In the gray decay
They chew the last few dollars off Old Beale Street's carcass
Carrion and mercy
Blue and silver sparkling drums
Cheap guitars, eye shades, and guns
Aimed at the hot blood of being no one
Down and out in Memphis, Tennessee
Old Furry sings the blues

You bring him smoke and drink and he'll play for you
It's mostly muttering now and sideshow spiel
But there was one song he played I could really feel

There's a double bill murder at the New Daisy
The old girl's silent across the street
She's silent, waiting for the wrecker's beat
Silent, staring at her stolen name
Diamond boys and satin dolls
Bourbon laughter, ghosts, history falls
To parking lots and shopping malls
As they tear down old Beale Street
Old Furry sings the blues
He points a bony finger at you and says "I don't like you"
Everybody laughs as if it's the old man's standard joke
But it's true...
We're only welcome for our drink and smoke

W.C. Handy, I'm rich and I'm fey
And I'm not familiar with what you played
But I get such strong impressions of your hey day
Looking up and down old Beale Street
Ghosts of the darktown society
Come right out of the bricks at me
Like it's a Saturday night
They're in their finery
Dancing it up and making deals
Furry sings the blues
Why should I expect that old guy to give it to me true?
Fallen to hard luck,
And time and other thieves
While our limo is shining on his shanty street,
Old Furry sings the blues

A STRANGE BOY

A strange boy is weaving
A course of grace and havoc
On a yellow skateboard,
Thru midday sidewalk traffic
Just when I think he's foolish and childish
And I want him to be manly
I catch my fool and my child
Needing love and understanding
What a strange, strange boy
He still lives with his family
Even the war and the navy couldn't bring him to maturity
He keeps referring back to school days
And clinging to his child
Fidgeting and bullied
His crazy wisdom holding onto something wild
He asked me to be patient
Well I failed "Grow up!" I cried
And as the smoke was clearing he said
"Give me one good reason why"

What a strange, strange boy
He sees the cars as sets of waves
Sequences of mass and space
He sees the damage in my face

We got high on travel
And we got drunk on alcohol
And on love the strongest poison and medicine of all
See how that feeling comes and goes?
Like the pull of moon on tides
Now I am surf rising
Now parched ribs of sand at his side
What a strange, strange boy
I gave him clothes and jewelry
I gave him my warm body
I gave him power over me

A thousand glass eyes were staring
In a cellar full of antique dolls
I found an old piano
And sweet chords rose up in waxed New England halls
While the boarders were snoring
Under crisp white sheets of curfew
We were newly lovers then
We were fire in the stiff blue-haired house rules

HEJIRA

I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
There's comfort in melancholy
When there's no need to explain
It's just as natural as the weather
In this moody sky today
In our possessive coupling
So much could not be expressed
So now I am returning to myself
These things that you and I suppressed
I see something of myself in everyone
Just at this moment of the world
As snow gathers like bolts of lace
Waltzing on a ballroom girl
You know it never has been easy
Whether you do or you do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of extremities
Or stick to some straighter line

Now here's a man and a woman sitting on a rock
They're either going to thaw out or freeze
Listen...
Strains of Benny Goodman
Coming through the snow and the pinewood trees
I'm porous with travel fever
But you know I'm so glad to be on my own
Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger
Can set up trembling in my bones
I know no one's going to show me everything
We all come and go unknown
Each so deep and superficial
Between the forceps and the stone

Well I looked at the granite markers
Those tribute to finality, to eternity
And then I looked at myself here
Chicken-scratching for my immortality
In the church they light the candles
And the wax rolls down like tears
There is the hope and the hopelessness
I've witnessed thirty years
We're only particles of change I know, I know
Orbiting around the sun
But how can I have that point of view
When I'm always bound and tied to someone?
White flags of winter chimneys
Waving truce against the moon
In the mirrors of a modern bank,
From the window of my hotel room.

I'm traveling in some vehicle,
I'm sitting in some cafe,
A defector from the petty wars
Until love sucks me back that way.

OTIS AND MARLENA

Marlena under Foster Grants
She's undercover from the dawn’s advance
That girl is travel drained
And the neon mercury vapor stained
Miami sky It's red as meat
It's a cheap pink rose
Otis in the driver's seat
Watches the street lights fade away
On louvered blocks, in green sea air
In fluorescent fossil yards
Slippers are shuffling into folding chairs
Freckled hands are shuffling cards
They've come for sun and fun
While Muslims stick-up Washington.

Otis empties out the trunk
On the steps of that celebrated dump
Sleazing by the sea
Bow down to her royal travesty
In her ballrooms, heads of state
In her bedrooms, rented girls
Always the grand parades of cellulite
Jiggling to her golden pools
Through flock and cupid colonnades
They jiggle into surgery
Hopefully beneath the blade
They dream of golden beauty
They've come for sun and fun
While Muslims stick-up Washington

Marlena white as stretcher sheets
Watches it all from her tenth floor balcony
Like it's her opera box
All those Pagliacci summer frocks
Otis is fiddling with the TV dial
All he gets are cartoons and reruns
She taps her glass with an emery file
Watching three rings in the sun
The golden dive, the fatted flake
They sizzle in the mink oil
It's all a dream
She has awake
Checked into Miami Royal
Where they've come for sun and fun
While Muslims hold up Washington

COME IN FROM THE COLD

Back in 1957
We had to dance a foot apart
And they hawk-eyed us from the sidelines
Holding their rulers without a heart
And so with just a touch of our fingers
We could make our circuitry explode
All we ever wanted
Was just to come in from the cold

We really thought we had a purpose
We were so anxious to achieve
We had hope
The world held promise
For a slave to liberty
Freely I slaved away for something better
And I was bought and sold
And all I ever wanted
Was to come in from the cold

I feel your leg under the table
Leaning into mine
I feel renewed
I feel disabled
By these bonfires in my spine
I don't know who the arsonist was
Which incendiary soul
But all I ever wanted
Was just to come in from the cold

I am not some stone commission
Like a statue in a park
I am flesh and blood and vision
I am howling in the dark
Long blue shadows of the jackals
Are falling on a pay phone by the road
Oh, all they ever wanted
Was to come in from the cold

Is this just vulgar electricity?
Is this the edifying fire (it was so pure)?
Does your smile's covert complicity
Debase as it admires?
(just a flu with a temperature)
Are you just checking out your mojo
Or am I just fighting off growing old
(just a high fever)
All I ever wanted
Was just to come in from the cold

I know we never will be perfect
Never entirely clear
(when the moon shines)
We get hurt and we just panic
And we strike out
Out of fear
(you were only being kind)
I fear the sentence of this solitude
two hundred years on hold
(for my loving crime)
Oh, and all we ever wanted
Was just to come in from the cold

When I thought life had some meaning
Then I thought I had some choice
(I was running blind)
And I made some value judgments
In a self-important voice
But then absurdity came over me
And I longed to lose control
(into no mind)
Oh, all I ever wanted
Was just to come in from the cold

TURBULENT INDIGO

You want to make Van Goghs
Raise them up like sheep
Make them out of Eskimos
And women if you please
Make them nice and normal
Make them nice and neat
You see him with his shotgun there?
Bloodied in the wheat?
Oh what do you know about
Living in Turbulent Indigo?

Brash fields, crude crows
In a scary sky
In a golden frame
Roped off
Tourists guided by
Tourists talking about the madhouse
Talking about the ear
The madman hangs in fancy homes
They wouldn't let him near!
He'd piss in their fireplace!
He'd drag them through Turbulent Indigo

"I'm a burning hearth" he said
"People see the smoke
But no one wants to warm themselves
Sloughing off a coat
And all my little landscapes
All my yellow afternoons
Stack up around this vacancy
Like dirty cups and spoons
No mercy Sweet Jesus!
No mercy from Turbulent Indigo"

THE MAGDALENE LAUNDRIES

I was an unmarried girl
I’d just turned twenty-seven
When they sent me to the Sisters
For the way men looked at me.
Branded as a Jezebel,
I knew I was not bound for Heaven
I’d be cast in shame
Into the Magdalene Laundries.

Most girls come here pregnant
Some by their own fathers.
Bridget got that belly By her parish priest.
We’re trying to get things white as snow,
All of us woe-begotten daughters,
In the steaming stains
Of the Magdalene Laundries.

Prostitutes and destitutes
And temptresses like me
- Fallen women -
Sentenced into dreamless drudgery...
Why do they call this place
“Our Lady of Charity”?
Oh, charity!

These bloodless brides of Jesus,
If they had just once glimpsed their groom,
Then they’d know, and they’d drop their stones
Concealed behind their rosaries.
They wilt the grass they walk upon
They leech the light out of a room.
They’d like to drive us down the drain
At the Magdalene Laundries.

Peg O’Connell died today.
She was a cheeky girl,
A flirt
They just stuffed her in a hole!
Surely to God you’d think at least some bells would ring!
One day I’m going to die here too,
And they’ll plant me in the dirt
Like some lame bulb
That never blooms come any spring,
Come any spring,
No, not any spring

paintings by Joni Mitchell

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