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Forever Words: The Unknown Poems
A collection of never-before-published poems by Johnny Cash, edited and introduced by Pulitzer-prize winning poet Paul Muldoon with a foreword by John Carter Cash. Illustrated with facsimile reproductions of Cash's own handwritten pages.
Since his first recordings in 1955, Johnny Cash was an icon in the music world. In this collection of poems and song lyrics that have never been published before, we see the world through his eyes and view his reflection on his own interior reality, his frailties and his strengths alike. In his hallmark voice, he pens verses about love, pain, freedom, and mortality, and expresses insights on culture, his family, his fame, even Christmas. Forever Words confirms Johnny Cash as a brilliant and singular American literary figure. His music is a part of our collective history, and here the depth of his artistry and talent become even more evident."
Since his first recordings in 1955, Johnny Cash was an icon in the music world. In this collection of poems and song lyrics that have never been published before, we see the world through his eyes and view his reflection on his own interior reality, his frailties and his strengths alike. In his hallmark voice, he pens verses about love, pain, freedom, and mortality, and expresses insights on culture, his family, his fame, even Christmas. Forever Words confirms Johnny Cash as a brilliant and singular American literary figure. His music is a part of our collective history, and here the depth of his artistry and talent become even more evident."
144 pages, Hardcover
First published November 17, 2016
83 people are currently reading
1473 people want to read
About the author
Johnny Cash
243 books315 followersJohnny Cash, born J. R. Cash, also known as "The Man in Black", was a multiple Grammy Award-winning American country singer-songwriter. Cash is widely considered to be one of the most influential American musicians of the 20th century.
Cash was known for his deep, distinctive voice, his trademark dark clothing which earned him his nickname, the boom-chick-a-boom or "freight train" sound of his Tennessee Three backing band, and his demeanor. He rarely (if ever) wavered from introducing himself before performing, with the greeting, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash."
Much of Cash's music, especially that of his later career, echoed themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption. His signature songs include "I Walk the Line", "Folsom Prison Blues", "Ring of Fire", "That Old Wheel" (a duet with Hank Williams Jr.), "Cocaine Blues", and "Man in Black". He also recorded several humorous songs, such as "One Piece at a Time", "The One on the Right Is on the Left", "Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog" a duet with June Carter, Jackson, and "A Boy Named Sue"; rock-and-roll numbers such as "Get Rhythm"; and various railroad songs, such as "Rock Island Line" and "Orange Blossom Special".
He sold over 90 million albums in his nearly fifty-year career and came to occupy a "commanding position in music history".
Cash was known for his deep, distinctive voice, his trademark dark clothing which earned him his nickname, the boom-chick-a-boom or "freight train" sound of his Tennessee Three backing band, and his demeanor. He rarely (if ever) wavered from introducing himself before performing, with the greeting, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash."
Much of Cash's music, especially that of his later career, echoed themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption. His signature songs include "I Walk the Line", "Folsom Prison Blues", "Ring of Fire", "That Old Wheel" (a duet with Hank Williams Jr.), "Cocaine Blues", and "Man in Black". He also recorded several humorous songs, such as "One Piece at a Time", "The One on the Right Is on the Left", "Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog" a duet with June Carter, Jackson, and "A Boy Named Sue"; rock-and-roll numbers such as "Get Rhythm"; and various railroad songs, such as "Rock Island Line" and "Orange Blossom Special".
He sold over 90 million albums in his nearly fifty-year career and came to occupy a "commanding position in music history".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 229 reviews
November 23, 2023
Hay algo muy tierno en estos poemas, algo como sencillo y claro. Me hizo pensar en Jose Alfredo Jimenez, en esas canciones que tienen pocas palabras, pero al ser tan aterrizadas son muy sinceras y hermosas. Me tomó muy por sorpresa este libro, no soy particularmente fan de JC, y no sé exactamente cómo llegó este libro a mis manos o cómo acabé leyéndolo hoy. Pero es muy precioso, y llegó en el momento justo.
"Bueno, van ya muchos días
De cansada carretera
Y van ya muchos días
De viajes muy largos
Y a menudo me digo:
Punto final a esto
Pero extraño viajar
Y extraño las canciones
Nací para cantar
Pero no al viento o al espacio
Sino al corazón de la gente
Y a los oídos de la gente
Es un don de Dios
Y ruego por usarlo
Y cantarle al corazón
Y cantarle a los oídos"
"Bueno, van ya muchos días
De cansada carretera
Y van ya muchos días
De viajes muy largos
Y a menudo me digo:
Punto final a esto
Pero extraño viajar
Y extraño las canciones
Nací para cantar
Pero no al viento o al espacio
Sino al corazón de la gente
Y a los oídos de la gente
Es un don de Dios
Y ruego por usarlo
Y cantarle al corazón
Y cantarle a los oídos"
February 7, 2017
Johnny cash was much more than he seemed, as the “Man in Black” he acquired a reputation. Such a label does nothing but reduce his personality down to a dark and sombre state, which is drastically unfair. Indeed, as indicated by John Carter Cash’s forward, none of us really knew his farther. Most of all Cash was human; he had many layers, some of which his words began to reveal and some of which will never be known.
Whilst working my way through this collection, I couldn’t help but hear Cash’s voice in my head. I’m a big fan of his music, and I’m familiar with a large number of his tracks. Perhaps because of this it came through when reading in a similar metre. Some of the longer poems were eerily familiar. I could hear him singing with his strong pronunciation of certain words. It was a wonderful experience.
Of particular note for me was a poem called “Forever.” The title of this edition was clearly named after it, and it is the strongest one in here:
“You tell me that I must perish
Like the flowers that I cherish
Nothing remaining of my name
Nothing remembered of my fame
But the trees that I planted
Still are young
The Songs I sang
Will still be sung”
It was written just a few months before his death in 2003. And for me it says a great deal. He speaks to his creator; he questions his fate. Death is coming for him, as it does for all of us, and he spits in the face of his end. He may perish, but his songs will be sung. His name may diminish, his notoriety forgotten, but his songs will still be sung. At the day of his death he is still young. His body is old, and his heart heavy, but his songs are young. They will always be remembered. In a sense, he cheats death as his words enter the realms of immortality: the realms of forever.
To relate back to my original point of layers, as strong as this poem is, it stands in direct contrast to the track “Hurt.” The lyrics of this speak a different tale, of a man who would gladly put aside his “empire of dirt” and do things a little differently if given a second chance. This was released in 2002, and the point is he clearly felt conflicted things about his name and legacy. Just a year later his words sounded more accepting and resigned. Cash was a complex man; these poems do show a glimpse him no matter how brief or how fleeting it may be.
Due to the nature of the writing here, I only recommend this to those who are already familiar with the artist himself. If you are not a fan, this won’t be for you.
Whilst working my way through this collection, I couldn’t help but hear Cash’s voice in my head. I’m a big fan of his music, and I’m familiar with a large number of his tracks. Perhaps because of this it came through when reading in a similar metre. Some of the longer poems were eerily familiar. I could hear him singing with his strong pronunciation of certain words. It was a wonderful experience.
Of particular note for me was a poem called “Forever.” The title of this edition was clearly named after it, and it is the strongest one in here:
“You tell me that I must perish
Like the flowers that I cherish
Nothing remaining of my name
Nothing remembered of my fame
But the trees that I planted
Still are young
The Songs I sang
Will still be sung”
It was written just a few months before his death in 2003. And for me it says a great deal. He speaks to his creator; he questions his fate. Death is coming for him, as it does for all of us, and he spits in the face of his end. He may perish, but his songs will be sung. His name may diminish, his notoriety forgotten, but his songs will still be sung. At the day of his death he is still young. His body is old, and his heart heavy, but his songs are young. They will always be remembered. In a sense, he cheats death as his words enter the realms of immortality: the realms of forever.
To relate back to my original point of layers, as strong as this poem is, it stands in direct contrast to the track “Hurt.” The lyrics of this speak a different tale, of a man who would gladly put aside his “empire of dirt” and do things a little differently if given a second chance. This was released in 2002, and the point is he clearly felt conflicted things about his name and legacy. Just a year later his words sounded more accepting and resigned. Cash was a complex man; these poems do show a glimpse him no matter how brief or how fleeting it may be.
Due to the nature of the writing here, I only recommend this to those who are already familiar with the artist himself. If you are not a fan, this won’t be for you.
November 26, 2024
"My dad was a poet. He saw the world through unique glasses, with simplicity, spirituality, and humor. He loved a good story and was quick to find comedy, even in bleak circumstances." -- John Carter Cash on his famous father, page 2
At just over twenty years since his passing, there's probably not much more unreleased material out there featuring the work of singer/songwriter Johnny Cash. While the occasional Personal File discs (stockpiled songs - usually just Cash's vocals and his acoustic guitar - that weren't made public until the 21st century) or bootleg concerts recordings are released to eager fans, it is sadly realistic to acknowledge that these 'new' musical items will eventually cease. I supposed the next best thing is 'The Man in Black''s writings - and one of the first official honors in his momentous career was being elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame at the tender age of 45, preceding eventual entries into the country, rock AND gospel 'HoFs' within the next decades - and his namesake son has now assembled forty freewheeling poems in Forever Words. When reading these compositions - which span from the mid-1950's until a month before his death in 2003 - it is easy to imagine Cash's signature weathered baritone voice booming out the words amidst the boom-chicka-boom guitar riffs. Some entries will strike a familiar chord - he takes another shot (😉) at his 'Don't Take Your Guns to Town,' featuring tweaked lyrics - and some are downright melancholy like 'Forever,' in which he simply addresses his legacy just weeks prior to his demise at 71. But what is often apparent is his sly yet straightforward gift for storytelling in the verses, whether referencing the forest fire he accidentally ignited (!) in 'California Poem,' his temporary mid-1980's career lull in 'Does Anybody Out There Love Me?,' or his eventual life story via silver screen in 'Don't Make a Movie About Me.'
At just over twenty years since his passing, there's probably not much more unreleased material out there featuring the work of singer/songwriter Johnny Cash. While the occasional Personal File discs (stockpiled songs - usually just Cash's vocals and his acoustic guitar - that weren't made public until the 21st century) or bootleg concerts recordings are released to eager fans, it is sadly realistic to acknowledge that these 'new' musical items will eventually cease. I supposed the next best thing is 'The Man in Black''s writings - and one of the first official honors in his momentous career was being elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame at the tender age of 45, preceding eventual entries into the country, rock AND gospel 'HoFs' within the next decades - and his namesake son has now assembled forty freewheeling poems in Forever Words. When reading these compositions - which span from the mid-1950's until a month before his death in 2003 - it is easy to imagine Cash's signature weathered baritone voice booming out the words amidst the boom-chicka-boom guitar riffs. Some entries will strike a familiar chord - he takes another shot (😉) at his 'Don't Take Your Guns to Town,' featuring tweaked lyrics - and some are downright melancholy like 'Forever,' in which he simply addresses his legacy just weeks prior to his demise at 71. But what is often apparent is his sly yet straightforward gift for storytelling in the verses, whether referencing the forest fire he accidentally ignited (!) in 'California Poem,' his temporary mid-1980's career lull in 'Does Anybody Out There Love Me?,' or his eventual life story via silver screen in 'Don't Make a Movie About Me.'
February 10, 2017
This is a great addition to anyone who loves Johnny Cash - uncollected unpublished song lyrics and/or poems, spanning from the 1940s to the 1980s. There is an introduction by his daughter, who helped pull the collection together from the many scraps and tidbits he left behind. I love how the book includes photos of some of the poems/songs on the scraps they were found - notebook paper, hotel stationery, airplane stationery. Some of them have a clear subject and some I suspect were not intended for the public (one is for sure a ranting poem! Don't we all have those?).
I would say this is for fans and historians alike. Thanks to the publisher for letting me see a review copy!
Favorites:
I Heard On the News (early 1970s)
"...What kind of animal is man
That he would pause
in his killing
To go about the business
Of preparing for the living
Knowing
That he will immediately return
To the business of killing?"
You Never Knew My Mind
You can see the original on this auction site!
I would say this is for fans and historians alike. Thanks to the publisher for letting me see a review copy!
Favorites:
I Heard On the News (early 1970s)
"...What kind of animal is man
That he would pause
in his killing
To go about the business
Of preparing for the living
Knowing
That he will immediately return
To the business of killing?"
You Never Knew My Mind
You can see the original on this auction site!
October 2, 2018
FOREVER WORDS: THE UNKNOWN POEMS
Written by Johnny Cash and Edited by Paul Muldoon
2016; 144 Pages (Blue Rider Press)
Genre: poetry, songwriter, nonfiction
★★★
Since I was a kid I have been listening to Johnny Cash via my dad. It wasn't until I saw the movie Walk the Line that I came to appreciate Cash's talent. He wasn't only a singer and entertainer but a creative artist. He wrote many of his songs which always sound like poetry and most have a message. I was excited to see that there were publishing a collection of poetry written by Cash. The poems were written from 1950s to 2003 (his death). I liked this collection, and there were a few poems that I loved, but a big chunk of the book is his son's preface and Muldoon's introduction. I would recommend this book to fans of Johnny Cash's songwriting and words.
***I received an eARC from NETGALLEY***
My Novelesque Life
Written by Johnny Cash and Edited by Paul Muldoon
2016; 144 Pages (Blue Rider Press)
Genre: poetry, songwriter, nonfiction
★★★
Since I was a kid I have been listening to Johnny Cash via my dad. It wasn't until I saw the movie Walk the Line that I came to appreciate Cash's talent. He wasn't only a singer and entertainer but a creative artist. He wrote many of his songs which always sound like poetry and most have a message. I was excited to see that there were publishing a collection of poetry written by Cash. The poems were written from 1950s to 2003 (his death). I liked this collection, and there were a few poems that I loved, but a big chunk of the book is his son's preface and Muldoon's introduction. I would recommend this book to fans of Johnny Cash's songwriting and words.
***I received an eARC from NETGALLEY***
My Novelesque Life
June 7, 2017
Earlier this school year (after Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature), I had my eighth grade honors students debate the question, "Is there a difference between poetry and song lyrics?" Furthermore, I asked them if they could tell the difference if they read them on a page. The consensus was "yes," there is a difference and yes, one can tell the difference is (usually) pretty clear.
I was reminded of that discussion as I read through this collection of Johnny Cash "poems." It is clear that most (if not all) were intended to be put to music. Once they are put to music, they take on a life of their own. Therefore, it is hard to judge these lyrics. Some are quite entertaining (such as the biting "I Wish You a Merry Christmas") but something is missing: that typical boom-chicka-boom-chicka.
I was reminded of that discussion as I read through this collection of Johnny Cash "poems." It is clear that most (if not all) were intended to be put to music. Once they are put to music, they take on a life of their own. Therefore, it is hard to judge these lyrics. Some are quite entertaining (such as the biting "I Wish You a Merry Christmas") but something is missing: that typical boom-chicka-boom-chicka.
January 10, 2017
A delight to any true Cash fan!
March 7, 2017
In response to the awarding of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature to Bob Dylan, reporters and bloggers anxiously mused, "Are song lyrics poetry?" As musings go, this one is wooly and threadbare as grandfather's cardigan, offering little more than terms of exclusion; "Get out of my anthology!" shouts Pop-Pop at the neighborhood kids. A question that yields more insight, but that also takes longer than a blog post to answer, might be "Where is the poetry in song lyrics?"
I found myself asking that very question while reading Johnny Cash's Forever Words, a collection of previously unpublished poems and unrecorded song lyrics. Cash, who died in 2003, never rose to Dylan's level of wordplay; hearing the gravelly, God-haunted, and thoroughly human tones of his late Unearthed albums, one suspects Cash wasn't willing to make the devil's barter that Dylan did, sacrificing voice for song. Fair enough. But even if they lack Dylan's sheer linguistic display, might one ask if Cash's lyrics possess the verbal resonance, lapidary phrasing, and suggestive imagery we find in great poetry?
In "Don't Make a Movie About Me," Cash warns, "If you don't know my tune you can't get it right," and everything about Forever Words suggests that one needs to know the tune, to be invested in Cash's music in order to be moved by his writings. As his son John Carter Cash admits in the foreword, "When I hold these papers, I feel his presence within the handwriting." The handwriting, not the writing itself.
That's not to say there aren't moments of genuine poetry here. At his best, Cash reads like a down-home Renaissance lyricist, as in "Chinky Pin Hill", with its echoes of Christopher Marlowe's famous invitation, "Come live with me and be my love / And we will all the pleasures prove":
Come along with me and we
Will get away from it all
We'll go through the mountains past
The shining waterfall
John Donne might have chuckled at the mordant humor that emerges in "I Wish You a Merry Christmas" through a series of curses for one who broke the speaker's heart: "I wish that you had choked on the glue / Of the goodbye letter you wrote" and "I hope you'll be committed / On the dawn that Christmas breaks." And in "Forever," there's something of Sir Philip Sidney's longing for artistic immortality:
You tell me that I must perish
Like the flowers that I cherish…
But the trees that I planted
Still are young
The songs I sang
Will still be sung
Cash's subjects are various, if familiar from his songs: they include love of God, women, and gold; the misery of addiction; episodes of inexplicable violence; the lives of Job and of Tecumseh; and the ordinary pleasures of hunting and drinking muscadine wine. Cash offers smart-aleck treatments of the pitfalls of celebrity, expressions of alienation and loneliness, and ballads of thwarted romance and romance achieved. He is by turns ironic, lusty, exultant, self-pitying, macho, and gentle, and sometimes he simply wants to tell a good story.
Unfortunately, Cash is working with limited poetic resources. He hews so closely to the conventions of rockabilly that his lines risk rhythmic sameness at times, while his rhymes can hammer more than chime ("With love she turned around / A tragedy unsound"). Longer lines especially can plague him; in "Spirit Rider," one hears him just filling out the beats: "I will mount my Hi-Yo, and I will ride off, ma'am / And I'll go on (and on and on) and on and on." If such limitations are the inheritance of his musical career, they are forgivable, or at least understandable. Other inheritances, however, ought to have been drowned at birth. Trying to evoke a Southern drawl, he resorts to pronunciations straight out of Hee-Haw:
We crossed Clinch River where
The skeeters scratch
Then we smoked 'em out
In a baccer patch
And the women in these poems seem not to exist apart from the men in their lives, living only to save them from their own reckless violence ("a kind sweet voice kept haunting him, / Joe, don't take your gun to town"), to lift them up ("I was driving in the rain / Twenty miles from Bangor, Maine / When I realized how much you mean to me"), or to satisfy their many cravings ("Who's gonna grease my skillet / When you're gone").
There is poetry in these works, and that's to Cash's credit. But if we truly want to test them as poems, perhaps we ought to empty out the Cash and ask if this same collection, submitted to publishers anonymously, would ever see the light of day. I think it might, but it wouldn't receive nearly the same attention; its numerous facsimile pages of Cash's hand-written compositions, its apologetic introduction by New Yorker poetry editor and amateur rock musician Paul Muldoon, and its several poems about, well, being Johnny Cash, fairly scream vanity project. Nothing nearly so vile as the collected works of Jim Morrison or of Jewel, mind you, but one trying to equip itself with excellence drawn from another venture. It's like putting a tooled leather saddle on an old quarter horse: it's flattering for the rider, but it won't make the horse trot any faster. Better to keep life simple and close to the ground:
So we double-rode my borrowed hoss
Till the land got flat
For like the cotton
Love grows good
In ground like that
("Crowley's Ridge")
A few of the works in Forever Words do cover that ground. Maybe not enough to justify the collection, but if you're reading it, you probably already love Cash, so you'll know how to find the poetry that's addressed "not to the wind and stars / But to people's hearts."
I found myself asking that very question while reading Johnny Cash's Forever Words, a collection of previously unpublished poems and unrecorded song lyrics. Cash, who died in 2003, never rose to Dylan's level of wordplay; hearing the gravelly, God-haunted, and thoroughly human tones of his late Unearthed albums, one suspects Cash wasn't willing to make the devil's barter that Dylan did, sacrificing voice for song. Fair enough. But even if they lack Dylan's sheer linguistic display, might one ask if Cash's lyrics possess the verbal resonance, lapidary phrasing, and suggestive imagery we find in great poetry?
In "Don't Make a Movie About Me," Cash warns, "If you don't know my tune you can't get it right," and everything about Forever Words suggests that one needs to know the tune, to be invested in Cash's music in order to be moved by his writings. As his son John Carter Cash admits in the foreword, "When I hold these papers, I feel his presence within the handwriting." The handwriting, not the writing itself.
That's not to say there aren't moments of genuine poetry here. At his best, Cash reads like a down-home Renaissance lyricist, as in "Chinky Pin Hill", with its echoes of Christopher Marlowe's famous invitation, "Come live with me and be my love / And we will all the pleasures prove":
Come along with me and we
Will get away from it all
We'll go through the mountains past
The shining waterfall
John Donne might have chuckled at the mordant humor that emerges in "I Wish You a Merry Christmas" through a series of curses for one who broke the speaker's heart: "I wish that you had choked on the glue / Of the goodbye letter you wrote" and "I hope you'll be committed / On the dawn that Christmas breaks." And in "Forever," there's something of Sir Philip Sidney's longing for artistic immortality:
You tell me that I must perish
Like the flowers that I cherish…
But the trees that I planted
Still are young
The songs I sang
Will still be sung
Cash's subjects are various, if familiar from his songs: they include love of God, women, and gold; the misery of addiction; episodes of inexplicable violence; the lives of Job and of Tecumseh; and the ordinary pleasures of hunting and drinking muscadine wine. Cash offers smart-aleck treatments of the pitfalls of celebrity, expressions of alienation and loneliness, and ballads of thwarted romance and romance achieved. He is by turns ironic, lusty, exultant, self-pitying, macho, and gentle, and sometimes he simply wants to tell a good story.
Unfortunately, Cash is working with limited poetic resources. He hews so closely to the conventions of rockabilly that his lines risk rhythmic sameness at times, while his rhymes can hammer more than chime ("With love she turned around / A tragedy unsound"). Longer lines especially can plague him; in "Spirit Rider," one hears him just filling out the beats: "I will mount my Hi-Yo, and I will ride off, ma'am / And I'll go on (and on and on) and on and on." If such limitations are the inheritance of his musical career, they are forgivable, or at least understandable. Other inheritances, however, ought to have been drowned at birth. Trying to evoke a Southern drawl, he resorts to pronunciations straight out of Hee-Haw:
We crossed Clinch River where
The skeeters scratch
Then we smoked 'em out
In a baccer patch
And the women in these poems seem not to exist apart from the men in their lives, living only to save them from their own reckless violence ("a kind sweet voice kept haunting him, / Joe, don't take your gun to town"), to lift them up ("I was driving in the rain / Twenty miles from Bangor, Maine / When I realized how much you mean to me"), or to satisfy their many cravings ("Who's gonna grease my skillet / When you're gone").
There is poetry in these works, and that's to Cash's credit. But if we truly want to test them as poems, perhaps we ought to empty out the Cash and ask if this same collection, submitted to publishers anonymously, would ever see the light of day. I think it might, but it wouldn't receive nearly the same attention; its numerous facsimile pages of Cash's hand-written compositions, its apologetic introduction by New Yorker poetry editor and amateur rock musician Paul Muldoon, and its several poems about, well, being Johnny Cash, fairly scream vanity project. Nothing nearly so vile as the collected works of Jim Morrison or of Jewel, mind you, but one trying to equip itself with excellence drawn from another venture. It's like putting a tooled leather saddle on an old quarter horse: it's flattering for the rider, but it won't make the horse trot any faster. Better to keep life simple and close to the ground:
So we double-rode my borrowed hoss
Till the land got flat
For like the cotton
Love grows good
In ground like that
("Crowley's Ridge")
A few of the works in Forever Words do cover that ground. Maybe not enough to justify the collection, but if you're reading it, you probably already love Cash, so you'll know how to find the poetry that's addressed "not to the wind and stars / But to people's hearts."
February 28, 2022
If Johnny Cash Had been the one to have read this I would have been mesmerized. We aren’t that lucky
July 5, 2023
MY SONG
Well, it's many a day
The road gets weary And it's many a day
That the way is long And I often say,
No more I do it
But I miss the traveling And I miss the songs
I was born to sing
But not to the wind and space
But to people's hearts
And people's ears
"Tis a gift from God And I pray I'd use it And sing to their hearts And sing to their ears
For a song can soar
Like the lofty eagle
And lift a heart
That has fallen low And a song can shine
Like a light in darkness And make the downcast
Look up and glow
I wish I owned
A great high mountain
With people below
Every way I turned
I wish they'd look up
And ears could hear me
And I'd sing my song
To the hearts that yearned
I would sing it loud would sing it long
Straight from the heart
I would sing it true
Then Id come back down
From my singing mountains
And your life would be better
Cause I sang for you ( p.gs 103-104)
December 27, 2020
Never thought I'd read a book of poems, and if you told me I would, I wouldn't have guessed they'd have been Johnny Cash's. But as I was reading, I could hear the melancholic baritone of the legend himself, and the boom-chicka of his guitar.
April 25, 2024
i love johnny cash
October 29, 2017
If you love Johnny Cash you’ll love these poems. That’s kind of the point.
December 13, 2016
This is a must read for fans of Johnny Cash and his music. Except for a brief narrative at the beginning of the book, the rest of the book is full of Johnny's poems, and also includes some photographs of his handwritten notes.
Reading these made me feel like I got to know him even more. He even ranted in one of them! ;)
Reading these made me feel like I got to know him even more. He even ranted in one of them! ;)
April 16, 2020
I listened to this while I was taking a walk today, and after a slow opening forward by his son, Johnny Cash's poetry stunned me. This short collection of poems illustrates in a very palpable way the power of poetry, for if anyone were to look at Mr. Cash and then at me, they would see no shortage of differences. But some of his poems could have been written by me. It's such a fantastic avenue to illustrate how words can unite people, no matter how different they may seem: everyone knows Johnny Cash. He's a legendary figure! And reading his poems, seeing oneself in them, drives home the wonder of verse for bringing out the similarities between people.
January 2, 2019
Song lyrics and poems are not exactly the same (as the fine introduction points out) - and this is probably a bit of both, but it's hard to tell, when you're reading and your brain keeps adding a tune and the voice of the man in black in your head. Definitely worth a read for anyone who enjoys both
the humour and seriousness of Johnny Cash who is always full of words of violence, love and social indignation.
the humour and seriousness of Johnny Cash who is always full of words of violence, love and social indignation.
April 25, 2021
PARA SIEMPRE
Verano 2003
Me dices que moriré
Como las flores que tanto amé
Nada de mi nombre quedará
Nada de mi fama se recordará
Pero los árboles que he plantado
Aún son jóvenes
Las canciones que canto
Aún seguirán cantándose
Un pequeño, pero muy pequeño libro con poemas, alguna foto y escritos del propio Cash. Te deja con ganas, esa es la verdad.
Verano 2003
Me dices que moriré
Como las flores que tanto amé
Nada de mi nombre quedará
Nada de mi fama se recordará
Pero los árboles que he plantado
Aún son jóvenes
Las canciones que canto
Aún seguirán cantándose
Un pequeño, pero muy pequeño libro con poemas, alguna foto y escritos del propio Cash. Te deja con ganas, esa es la verdad.
January 11, 2020
Fantastic poems, great introduction by poet Paul Muldoon, great book.
June 12, 2020
A loving testament to a father from his son showing the talents of Johnny Cash in his poems.
You can feel the love and pain and addiction and loss and religion in his poems. Very moving.
You can feel the love and pain and addiction and loss and religion in his poems. Very moving.
May 9, 2025
Cool to see the pens next to the scraps of paper he wrote them on
June 4, 2017
Every Johnny Cash fan should read this, I highly recommend this book. This book shows a whole other side of him, we get to learn so much more about The Man In Black.
His son, John Carter Cash, wrote a beautiful introduction that lets us get glimpse into the life of Johnny Cash.
There are copies of his handwritten poems and lyrics and a couple photographs that are featured in this book, I think they add a very special touch.
Johnny Cash was one of the best storytellers in my opinion, so it's great to be able to read all these pieces from him that were never made public.
His son, John Carter Cash, wrote a beautiful introduction that lets us get glimpse into the life of Johnny Cash.
There are copies of his handwritten poems and lyrics and a couple photographs that are featured in this book, I think they add a very special touch.
Johnny Cash was one of the best storytellers in my opinion, so it's great to be able to read all these pieces from him that were never made public.
June 4, 2017
I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.
First of all, I am not a country music fan so my knowledge of Johnny Cash music is extremely limited. I wanted to read this collection of poems, however, because the title is stunningly beautiful. Forever Words implies a promise of remembrance. But remembrance of what or of whom? Shakespeare wrote of the immortality of love achieved through poetry in Sonnet XVIII:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Forever Words contains previously unpublished poems/lyrics. The breadth of content is amazing. Yes, there are some poems like "Big-Hearted Girl" that practically have a guitar twanging in the background. Others, like "If You Love Me" are melancholy while the religious "Job" brings the Old Testament story of persecution and faith to life. The contemplative "Does Anybody Out There Love Me" reeks of insecurity and loneliness.
I read the Foreword: Redemptions by Cash's son John Carter Cash after I read the poems since I didn't want a son's interpretations to color my take on these works. The foreword is lovely and loving. Johnny Cash didn't need to worry if anyone loved him. His words truly are Forever Words.
First of all, I am not a country music fan so my knowledge of Johnny Cash music is extremely limited. I wanted to read this collection of poems, however, because the title is stunningly beautiful. Forever Words implies a promise of remembrance. But remembrance of what or of whom? Shakespeare wrote of the immortality of love achieved through poetry in Sonnet XVIII:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Forever Words contains previously unpublished poems/lyrics. The breadth of content is amazing. Yes, there are some poems like "Big-Hearted Girl" that practically have a guitar twanging in the background. Others, like "If You Love Me" are melancholy while the religious "Job" brings the Old Testament story of persecution and faith to life. The contemplative "Does Anybody Out There Love Me" reeks of insecurity and loneliness.
I read the Foreword: Redemptions by Cash's son John Carter Cash after I read the poems since I didn't want a son's interpretations to color my take on these works. The foreword is lovely and loving. Johnny Cash didn't need to worry if anyone loved him. His words truly are Forever Words.
August 26, 2016
Forever Words is a wonderful collection of almost lost treasure. Johnny Cash has been an icon in the music industry since the 1950s. This book contains a poems, song lyrics and handwritten letters that the world has yet to see. They are being published for the very first time in “Forever Words.”
Being a Johnny Cash fan myself, I was incredibly overjoyed by the prospect of this book. I read through the entire thing in the span of an hour. That being said, I’ll be thumbing through this book for years to come.
Cash’s thoughts speak volumes about how this man saw the world. While most of his life remains a mystery, there’s something to be said for the art that’s been memorialized between these pages. While I feel like I may know the man in black just a bit better, I’m left wishing for even more.
He will always remain a mystery to me but I thank his family for allowing these writings to be published. May Johnny Cash rest in paradise. Now go get yourself a copy of “Forever Words”.
Thank you to Edelweiss for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Being a Johnny Cash fan myself, I was incredibly overjoyed by the prospect of this book. I read through the entire thing in the span of an hour. That being said, I’ll be thumbing through this book for years to come.
Cash’s thoughts speak volumes about how this man saw the world. While most of his life remains a mystery, there’s something to be said for the art that’s been memorialized between these pages. While I feel like I may know the man in black just a bit better, I’m left wishing for even more.
He will always remain a mystery to me but I thank his family for allowing these writings to be published. May Johnny Cash rest in paradise. Now go get yourself a copy of “Forever Words”.
Thank you to Edelweiss for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
January 11, 2017
This book begins with a personal tribute to Cash by his son. Following is an introduction by a poet who is comparing Cash's writing to other poets and lyricist. The poems themselves read mostly like song lyrics in search of a tune.
December 7, 2016
Poems are lyrics that were not set to music. They provide insight into Johnny Cash's thoughts about the world around him.
December 30, 2016
What a gem. I'll be reading his poems again and again.
January 1, 2017
Really makes you think.
Really liked this book, it's like a little bit of his soul left behind in his words. Worth the read.
Really liked this book, it's like a little bit of his soul left behind in his words. Worth the read.
May 24, 2018
Johnny Cash has always been a ghostly figure on the periphery of my life. I grew up in a Christian home filled largely with the sounds of Christian music. Except when Dad and I would take a trip down to Grandpa's farm; without any big announcement, Dad would tune the radio to the AM country station (KRVN out of Lexington, NE), and for the next hour and a half, we'd listen to Johnny Cash, George Jones, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, etc. So I've always associated country music with "going home"; to this day (and much to my wife's puzzlement), I will turn on country music when I drive home to Nebraska.
But you can't grow up in a place like Nebraska and NOT encounter country music. And, if you've had even the tiniest exposure to country music, you know Johnny Cash. Cash and the music he represents has always intrigued me, especially in how it whipsaws from murderer's laments ("Folsom Prison Blues") to warnings about the Second Coming of Christ ("When the Man Comes Around"). Equal parts religious and bawdy, I think that Rodney Clapp was right to use Johnny Cash as the icon of what he called the "Great American Contradiction." Cash's songs have always struck me as authentically "human"--deeply flawed but somehow still hopeful. Cash's cover of Trent Reznor's "Hurt" is mind-blowing to me: Cash's voice is still strong but quavers, and it lifts the song from being a drug addict's lament to being a stunning reflection on human frailty.
I came across this collection of poems and songs, gathered by his son John Carter Cash, in an airport bookstore after a particularly grueling trip. I guess subconsiously, I needed to "get home" in more ways than one. The poems in here, arranged in no apparent particular order, span the entirety of Cash's life. Some were written in the 1940s; others were written in the late 1990s/early 2000s; many are undated.
Each piece often sounds less like a polished poem and more like a "song in progress" (which is probably the reason these pieces were never published), but you can still hear Cash's "voice" in them, that "outlaw cowboy" perspective that is equally rooted in an unshakable faith in God and in the frailty of sinful humanity. There are poems about love, violence, drugs, the Atonement, the biblical character Job (one of my favorites), and the natural beauty of the place called "home." To me, what unites the collection is the sense of longing...for restored relationships, for freedom from addiction, for a return to a lost and beautiful yesterday. There's something about Cash's lyrics that makes me go, "You know, he's right about that..." There's an edge of beauty even when he's confronting the ugliest truths about who we truly are.
For me, the poem that captures the essence of the book and of Cash's art is one from the 1970s (Vietnam-era) entitled, "The Walking Wounded." It opens:
We're in the church-house kneeling down
We're in the subways underground
We're in the bars and on the streets
We drive a truck, we walk a beat
We're in the mills and factories
We make the steel, we cut the trees,
A thousand-yard stare, eyes of glass
We will see you when you pass
We are the walking wounded
We lost our homes, we lost our dreams
All our goals turned into schemes
We hurt each other and ourselves
We went through long, traumatic spells
We cried out from the deepest pit
But rise back up each time we're hit
We fell from power and from grace
But resurrection's in our face
We are the walking wounded
That second-to-last line just slapped me in the face. The near-defiance of a hope that simply will not die...that's why Cash's music lives on. And that's why, even though my young mind couldn't articulate it, I felt so deeply captivated by Cash's rumbling baritone in those long-ago car trips: I was hearing woven into those words the same deep faith carried by the hymns and choruses we played at home...in a different register, yes...in a minor key, true...but there none the less.
But you can't grow up in a place like Nebraska and NOT encounter country music. And, if you've had even the tiniest exposure to country music, you know Johnny Cash. Cash and the music he represents has always intrigued me, especially in how it whipsaws from murderer's laments ("Folsom Prison Blues") to warnings about the Second Coming of Christ ("When the Man Comes Around"). Equal parts religious and bawdy, I think that Rodney Clapp was right to use Johnny Cash as the icon of what he called the "Great American Contradiction." Cash's songs have always struck me as authentically "human"--deeply flawed but somehow still hopeful. Cash's cover of Trent Reznor's "Hurt" is mind-blowing to me: Cash's voice is still strong but quavers, and it lifts the song from being a drug addict's lament to being a stunning reflection on human frailty.
I came across this collection of poems and songs, gathered by his son John Carter Cash, in an airport bookstore after a particularly grueling trip. I guess subconsiously, I needed to "get home" in more ways than one. The poems in here, arranged in no apparent particular order, span the entirety of Cash's life. Some were written in the 1940s; others were written in the late 1990s/early 2000s; many are undated.
Each piece often sounds less like a polished poem and more like a "song in progress" (which is probably the reason these pieces were never published), but you can still hear Cash's "voice" in them, that "outlaw cowboy" perspective that is equally rooted in an unshakable faith in God and in the frailty of sinful humanity. There are poems about love, violence, drugs, the Atonement, the biblical character Job (one of my favorites), and the natural beauty of the place called "home." To me, what unites the collection is the sense of longing...for restored relationships, for freedom from addiction, for a return to a lost and beautiful yesterday. There's something about Cash's lyrics that makes me go, "You know, he's right about that..." There's an edge of beauty even when he's confronting the ugliest truths about who we truly are.
For me, the poem that captures the essence of the book and of Cash's art is one from the 1970s (Vietnam-era) entitled, "The Walking Wounded." It opens:
We're in the church-house kneeling down
We're in the subways underground
We're in the bars and on the streets
We drive a truck, we walk a beat
We're in the mills and factories
We make the steel, we cut the trees,
A thousand-yard stare, eyes of glass
We will see you when you pass
We are the walking wounded
We lost our homes, we lost our dreams
All our goals turned into schemes
We hurt each other and ourselves
We went through long, traumatic spells
We cried out from the deepest pit
But rise back up each time we're hit
We fell from power and from grace
But resurrection's in our face
We are the walking wounded
That second-to-last line just slapped me in the face. The near-defiance of a hope that simply will not die...that's why Cash's music lives on. And that's why, even though my young mind couldn't articulate it, I felt so deeply captivated by Cash's rumbling baritone in those long-ago car trips: I was hearing woven into those words the same deep faith carried by the hymns and choruses we played at home...in a different register, yes...in a minor key, true...but there none the less.
November 19, 2017
John Carter Cash se dio a la tarea junto con el poeta Paul Muldoon de hacer una selección de poemas (inéditos) del celebre cantante y compositor Johnny Cash, estos poemas nos llevan a entender mejor el lado personal del que en vida fue conocido como el 'Man in black', su prosa describe desde pasajes bíblicos —no es desconocido que para JC la Biblia fuera su libro de cabecera, en ella encontraba el sosiego a todos sus demonios—, hasta simples historias de la vida cotidiana que iban desde hombres con un fuerte sentimiento nacionalista que se encaminaban a luchar una guerra que no era de ellos hasta la venganza de un hombre con el corazón roto. Un libro que todo fan de Cash debería tener en su biblioteca.
January 9, 2023
I was gifted this book by a loved one who loves Johnny Cash. They wanted me to read it so I gave it a go, I thoroughly enjoyed this short read. The poems were very good, particularly “Does anybody out there love me?” and “I’ll still love you” stood out to me. I also really liked the inclusion of the scans of notebook pages Cash himself wrote, nice touch.
However, I’m giving this a 3.5 star rating because some poems I didn’t quite connect with, and I suppose it makes sense I wouldn’t be as passionate for this book and the poems as a Cash fan would be (which I believe are the target audience for this). But overall, short and sweet, and I have some poems that spoke to my heart that I’ll remember forever, particularly at the time of my life I read this piece and the things I’m going through.
However, I’m giving this a 3.5 star rating because some poems I didn’t quite connect with, and I suppose it makes sense I wouldn’t be as passionate for this book and the poems as a Cash fan would be (which I believe are the target audience for this). But overall, short and sweet, and I have some poems that spoke to my heart that I’ll remember forever, particularly at the time of my life I read this piece and the things I’m going through.
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