This will be worth waiting for.
This just up on the L.A. Times book blog, “Jacket Copy”:
The poetry of musician Tom Waits will see publication next year in the book “Hard Ground,” published by the University of Texas Press. “Hard Ground” is a collaboration with photojournalist Michael O’Brien and will be a visual and poetic look at homelessness.
It is not the first time Waits’ poetry has appeared in print (even if NME says it is). Waits attended a poetry workshop at Beyond Baroque, the literary center in Venice, Calif. A poem he read there — an early version of “Diamonds on My Windshield” — was printed in the Sunset Palms Hotel, an occasional early ’70s ‘zine (the cover featured a line drawing by Charles Bukowski).
The rest here.
The book is due next March. Waits fans know already that his lyrics are poetic, grainy “book movies” (as Jack Kerouac would say) on their own. It will be interesting to see the work on the page not accompanied by that incredible mouth-full-bottle-shards voice of his.
photo: via L.A. Times/Jacket Copy
native to the place 