Adult Head: Poems by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy
Musical Brilliance Fails to Translate Into a Poetic Achievement
Despite being one of rock’s finest lyricists, Jeff Tweedy’s first book of poetry, Adult Head (Zoo Press, ISBN: 193202316X, 2004), fails to capture the immediacy and vitality of his work with Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, and Golden Smog. This is a fun collection for fans of those bands, but as a crossover into the poetry community, Tweedy's work falls short.
Working With Sounds
In line with his musical roots, Tweedy’s poems emphasize the sound and order of words above all else. This works well in choice lines from “Satan Explains” (“elope to finer cuts of grass”) or “When I Say My Heart” (“I mean / an emergency / worse than a clarinet”), but in the context of the whole poem they serve to do nothing except sound nice.
This desire to work with sounds is a noble one, though it does leave many of the poems in a state of nothing more than word-salad. “Prayer #1” and “Sister Invention” (the majority of the latter appeared in a similar nonsensical form as “I’m a Wheel” from the 2004 Wilco album A Ghost Is Born) read like the sort of poems that are normally associated with the stereotypical coffee-house poet: heady statements delivered word-by-word and breath-by-breath.
This style leaves the deeper meaning to be assumed, because there’s really no way to pull any sort of significance from the work as is. Esteemed poets such as Richard Hugo have placed importance on the music of language, but without literal music to enhance Tweedy’s words, they simply can’t stand on their own.
The Lyrical Difference
Fans of Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born will be interested in seeing the poems that have burn turned into lyrics. The most interesting of all of these is “Muzzle,” which turned into both “Muzzle of Bees” and “At Least That’s What You Said.” Tweedy's natural and honest vision in his lyrics has lent a mighty hand to their success, but within “Muzzle” are the problems that almost uniformly plague this collection.
In “At Least That’s What You Said,” Tweedy takes the “Muzzle” lines “or maybe all you mean / is to sting a silence in me” and turns them into the much simpler, sharper “or maybe all you mean is leave me alone.” The song version is nearly identical other than the addition of the narrator and the other person in the song being located as on a bed, but by utilizing the chorus effect of “At least that’s what you said” at the end of both verses, Tweedy is able to spin the song in a clever, yet necessary, manner.
The section that became “Muzzle of Bees” is also fairly similar, but the differences are deceptively major. Instead of the clunky “when dogs bark they look like they’re smiling,” the song turns it into the less-definitive and more appropriate “and dogs laugh, some say they’re barking.” A deletion of the weak line (and weak stanza/section ending) “and the green gets passed . . .” is replaced in favor of nothing. “Muzzle” ends with what would become “At Least That’s What You Said,” but “Muzzle of Bees” wisely ends with the breeze being divided between the narrator and his lost love: “Half of it’s you. Half is me.”
For Novelty Only
As a collection of poetry, Tweedy fails to deliver anything more than a series of language based poems, most of which fare better as songs. However, for the devoted Wilco fan, Adult Head will serve as a solid novelty. As essential as it is to the Wilco folklore, anyone looking for legitimate poetry will be largely disappointed.
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Adult Head by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy
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