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Folk song heroine, Jewel, famous for her extraordinarily popular album, "Pieces of You," has now released a spoken word project entitled "A Night Without Armour," a collection of 87 poems written and read by Jewel on Harper Audio cassette.
Throughout this reading, the Jewel adored by millions for her lilting, angelic singing and guitar playing, now lets naked lyrics do the entertaining, and entertain beautifully, they do.
Jewel reads the poetry with a soft-pitched, west-coast accent and earthy inflection. To resident Californians, she might sound like the girl next door, and she almost is. Jewel Kilcher was born and raised in Alaska and now resides in San Diego.
As a whole, "A Night Without Armour" relays universal truths about love, loss, inadequacies, loneliness and longing, childhood discovery, familial bonds, passionate cravings, friendships, broken relationships, spiritual journey, and zest for living in a tongue that translates bicoastly, word-wide. Jewel is a 1998 every-woman.
The poetry also unearths much about personal evolution. The words remain grounded, generous and kind. This is good contemporory poetry, packed with crisp imagery and clever phrasing and void of forced rhyme and rigid meter. Often, inner rhymes unravel, but Kilcher's poetic style like her hair remains straight and natural; "these are the things that have made me," she says in one poem.
"A Night Without Armour" is the work of a reader, an observer, a cow girl of the tundra, a former student of opera, and most recently a traveling musician. It depicts life's ripe times along with its rotten - without a chip of animosity on its shoulder. This poetry is the work of a gracious person who turned yodeling with her dad and singing reindeer songs with her mom into something magical - in front of the world last year.
The work reflects both experiencial and classical training. "I learned to add and subtract in school; I learned how to be human by reading poetry - Pablo Naruda, Octavio Paz, Maya Angelou. I came to depend on poetry in the darkest years of my life, and it has been my greatest liberator - making me intimate with myself, awakening and empowering my mind. And so, even more than my song-writing, it stays closest to my heart."
Kilcher's poetry champions the importance of remaining honest with one's heart and devoted to one's mind. It is the stuff that - achieving one's dreams is made of, and casts Jewel Kilcher as a leading role model for young people today. "For now, I am youth's soldier- chasing down an endless dawn," her poetry states.
Kilcher is even someone parents might dream of their own children becoming, but whose road less traveled- many parents might not have approved of. According to myth, Jewel Kilcher once lived in her car. According to MTV, she dropped out of college. According to her own poetry, she has been around the block and enjoyed it.
This is all the poetry of someone who just happens to be a beautiful blonde, "a blonde flame, a hurricane," one of the poems says.
"A Night Without Armour" is a long, long audio cassette because its author is an educated woman who has a lot to say about dignity, wherewithal, loyalty to her heritage and hopefulness for humanity. The work embodies the concept, "some things remain untouched and pure."
Jewel Kilcher's "A Night Without Armour" is modern poetry worth perusing.
The collection can also be found in book form.