Blackbird Singing
Poems and Lyrics, 1965-1999
by Paul McCartney
"Blackbird singing in the dead of night / Take these broken wings and learn to fly"
These words of Paul McCartney's are often recognized as defining a moment in our musical life, but through their simple beauty and accessibility they are also a piece of our literary heritage.
Few have exacted such a wide influence on late twentieth-century culture as Paul McCartney, whose graceful and unforgettable words have rooted themselves in the hearts and minds of generations of admirers around the world. Now, in Blackbird Singing: Poems and Lyrics, 1965-1999 [W. W. Norton & Company; April 23, 2001], McCartney not only confirms his status as a superb lyricist but also proves himself equally adept with the pure poetic form.
With more than 40 previously unpublished poems and over 50 of his legendary lyrics, Blackbird Singing gives us new insight into the life's work of one of our most beloved artists. As poet Adrian Mitchell writes in the Introduction, this is a book that reveals McCartney to be "a jeweler and a juggler when it comes to words." Published for National Poetry Month, Blackbird Singing is an historic work, as McCartney has never previously allowed his lyrics and, more recently, his poems to be collected in a volume that bears his name.
The impetus for this new book comes from two people who were both extremely close to McCartney: his friend Ivan Vaughan and his late wife, Linda Eastman McCartney. Ivan Vaughan's death in 1993 inspired in McCartney an intense need for expression that he found possible only in poetry. The lament "Ivan" led to a torrent of poems, and it is these words that are collected in Blackbird Singing. Also of profound significance was the support of Linda, who died in 1998 and who encouraged her husband to pursue his poetry in the years before her untimely death. Ultimately, this volume is a tribute to her literary sensibility and her immeasurable inspiration.
In Blackbird Singing, McCartney's poetry is alive with the same hopeful energy that fuels his best-known song lyrics; as he writes in the Foreword to this collection, "Both forms of writing have equal capacity to convey great depth of feeling." The book is divided into nine sections—some exploring a particular emotion, others linked by personal history, and one longer poem, "Standing Stone," which forms its own section.
True to his belief that poetry is not meant to be locked away in an ivory tower but should be available to everyone, McCartney writes in a clear, unpretentious style, exploring the familiar themes of innocence, love, loss, memory, and social activism with a dreamlike yet thoroughly mature attentiveness. From poems of childhood like "In Liverpool" and "Dinner Tickets" to the collection's intimate and elegiac final section, "Nova," McCartney's tone and style shift, but his love of language and his belief in its ability to empower those who use it wisely remain a constant.
Both the lyrics and poems in Blackbird Singing reveal McCartney's deeply rooted belief that words have the power to open our minds and transform the way we see ourselves and the world around us. McCartney's social message rings clear in his lyrics, from "Blackbird," written as a tribute to those struggling for civil rights, to "Eleanor Rigby," with its surreal image of a woman "wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door," eloquently capturing a desperate loneliness. These human concerns are just as evident in McCartney's newer poems such as "Chasing the Cherry," about nuclear devastation, and "Looking for Changes," a poem that serves as a passionate defense of animal rights.
Paul McCartney is unquestionably one of the most influential creative forces of the late twentieth century, inspiring generations of lyricists, activists, and writers. It is only in Blackbird Singing that those who were seduced long ago by the elegant, spare lyrics of songs like "Yesterday" and "Hey Jude" will be able to see the interconnectness of McCartney's poetry and lyrics, and to perceive fully—for the first time—the scope of this artist's literary accomplishments.
Return to Blackbird Singing Home Page