This first collection brings together early and late poems, along with some of Sir Paul's greatest hits (including the words to "Yesterday," "Lady Madonna," "Penny Lane," and "Hey Jude.") In his introduction, editor and fellow Liverpudlian Adrian Mitchell urges readers to "wash out the name and the fame" and examine what's on the page. If you can do this, you're in for a pleasant surprise.

True, some of the lyrics appear trite on paper--"Heart of the Country" and "Mull of Kintyre" are notable offenders. Even "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" seems naked and frail without the rousing brass section. But McCartney's deeper vulnerability comes to the surface in "Dinner Tickets," a poem about his childhood. And "Standing Stone" recounts a gutsy fable about a man using the power of imagination to fend off the enemy: he erects a standing stone, "a weathered finger to the sky" and learns to be "at peace with peace." "Irish Language" boasts a rare streak of irony as the narrator admires the way "those Irish chappies" swill the language around in their mouths and dribble it through their fingers.

The song ends with a beautifully timed punch line: "The Beatles were a bunch of Micks." Blackbird Singing closes with poems dedicated to the author's late wife that are tender, sparse, and startlingly honest.

From Publishers Weekly: Sir Paul McCartney painter, composer and songwriter (even the Queen taps her feet to "Penny Lane") has been steadily writing poetry along with the lyrics memorized by much of the world. British political poet and satirist Adrian Mitchell (who is well-known over there, and best represented by Heart on the Left: Selected Poems 1953-1984 over here) worked as a Daily Mail pop critic in 1963 and published the first national interview with the Beatles, remaining friends with McCartney since. In consultation with Sir Paul, he has selected from among McCartney's works.

There are the grand and expected songs, such as "Hey Jude," "Yesterday" and "Eleanor Rigby"; ditties like "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da" and surreal oddities like "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window"; elegies for McCartney's wife, Linda Eastman McCartney, and for friend Ivan Vaughan; and a variety of verse, such as "To Find the Joy": "Seagulls spiral whirl/ Against the sullen oak/ No scientific thought informs/ Their madcap tribal swirl." As Mitchell writes: "Clean out your head. Wash out the name and the fame. Read these clear words and listen to them decide for yourself." (Apr. 23) Forecast: While McCartney is of a completely different cast than Bob Dylan, his appeal may be even greater than that of the latter great poet/songwriter. Expect strong and steady sales after a solid showing on bestseller lists. Mitchell's latest collection, All Shook Up: Poems 1997-2000, is due this month and includes "Gourmet Architecture, Troy, New York": "It might take a year or two.

 W. W. Norton & Company 0-393-02049-5 / 9780393020496
Hardcover As New Condition 

Price: 24.75 USD

Tony Bennett, David Byrne, and occasionally David Bowie all do it--they make art. With the introduction of Paul McCartney: Paintings, we can now add the famous Beatle to the list. The book is a catalog of paintings from McCartney's 1999 exhibition in Germany. Music and art have many things in common; for McCartney it is the freedom to "play" that connects both endeavors. Fittingly, his paintings draw most of their influence from abstract expressionism, in which the material quality of the paint itself inspires the drips, blobs, and splatters. His paintings range from cartoon-like figures and faces to open landscapes. The colors are dynamic with varying thicknesses of paint, some with marks scratched into the surface, all with stories and symbolic value.

From the illustrations and accompanying essays to the very candid interview, we are given remarkable insight into McCartney's practice as a committed creative person. He confides his insecurities as a painter who has never gone to art school, and his defining moments as an artist both musically and visually. There is an unusually generous section in which McCartney discusses many of the paintings in the book; it's a behind-the-scenes look as he elaborates on the personal meanings behind certain symbols, tells stories and anecdotes, and acknowledges his painterly influences, specifically Willem de Kooning. Also included are personal photographs of the artist at work, 117 color illustrations, and 17 duotone photographs.

Yes, it's him, and no, they're not bad. In 1982, after years spent as a collector and in the company of artists, McCartney began painting his first canvases, inspired (as he notes repeatedly in the various interviews here), primarily by the late Willem de Kooning, who lived down the road from him at the time. The paintings he produced then and sinceAselected here in 117 color illustrations and 17 duotone photosAreadily show the late de Kooning's influence: lush color washes, careful blocking of the canvas, airy abstraction. The problem is that none of McCartney's paintings in this style approach his models in terms of brush work, or significance. Inane titles and commentary on the work do not help matters. McCartney and interlocutor Wolfgang Suttner, a culture bureaucrat in the German county of Siegen-Wittgenstein, have the following exchange over Big Mountain Face, which furnishes the book's cover: Suttner: "It is the McCartney style, it is drainage. I think we talked about this picture being like the face in the mountain." McCartney: "Yes, like Mount Rushmore, the monumental faces of American presidents. It's as if someone has carved this great big face on the side of the mountain." A loose assortment of little-known art journalists with varying degrees of separation from McCartney (one was "supported by McCartney" in a gallery endeavor and is a former editor of the Beatles' literary imprint, Zapple), provide further insights into works like Boxer lips, Sea God, Mr. Kipps; Brains on Fire and Bowie Spewing (McCartney: "Which means being sick"). But the paintings are pleasant to look at, at times evoking Philip Guston (White Dream) and '80s landscape artist Christian Brechneff, and fans will be happy to see their man has a hobby at which he excels.

 Bulfinch 0-8212-2673-8 / 9780821226735
Hardcover Brand New Hardcover w/JACKET Brand New Book Jacket Boston 

Price: 63.70 USD